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AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 


SOME BORZOI BOOKS 
SPRING, 1924 

THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE 

J. ANKER LARSEN 

WOMEN AND WIVES 
HARVEY FERGUSSON 

THE PITIFUL WIFE 
STORM JAMESON 

COUNTRY PEOPLE 
RUTH SUCKOW 

TONY 

STEPHEN HUDSON 

WINE OF FURY 
LEIGH ROGERS 

IMPERTURBE 
ELLIOT H. PAUL 

SANDOVAL 
THOMAS BEER 





i 

AN ISLAND 
CHRONICLE 

by 

WILLIAM 

CUMMINGS ■ 



NEW YORK 

ALFRED • A • KNOPF 

1924 






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COPYRIGHT, 1924, BT ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. 


Published, May, 1924 


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Set up, eleotrotyped, printed and bound by 
The V ail- B olio u Press, Inc., Binghamton, N. Y. 
Paper supplied by W. F. Ether inoton & Co., New York. 


MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES 
OF AMERICA 

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The Island of the Fist lies in a general northerly and 
southerly extension along the New England coast. It is 
separated from the mainland to the westward by a pleas¬ 
ant bay two miles in breadth; to the east the misty waters 
of the Atlantic roll to far horizons. 

It is called the Island of the Fist because of the pe¬ 
culiar formation of its northern extremity, which rises in 
a great cape—the Fist itself—straight out of the sea. 
The curved highest reach of the promontory corresponds 
to the row of knuckles along a clenched hand; from this 
high ridge of knuckles the face of the cliff drops sheer 
into the sea, where the giant fingers, groping in mysterious 
regions, have clutched with everlasting strength the deep 
foundations of the earth. Inland the land slopes away 
gradually, diminishing in breadth, till it lies at last, just 
above the level of the waters, a long narrow wrist, and 
on either side of this wrist the waters of the sea and the 
waters of the bay ebb and flow, to the east and to the 
west. 

Seen from a great height on a summer day, the bit of 
green land is like a tree floating at full length but an¬ 
chored. The main roadway, like a trunk, extends from 
end to end of the island; from this, like limbs and 
branches, other roads and lanes spread away at varying 
angles, now visible, now lost to view in the rolling masses 
I 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
of foliage; and the scattered cottages, barns and silos, 
painted red and white, resemble the clustered flowers or 
fruit of some strange genus. 

The main road or trunk is six miles long, and at the 
end of it farthest from the Fist a cluster of fruit, richer 
than any other, hangs full ripe at the very top of the 
tree. It is the cluster of houses, barns and small shops 
that constitute the village of Melton. 

Melton is serene, as places and people who have a past 
are apt to be, especially when, as in this instance, that past 
is of no particular importance. A community of native 
New England people farmed the island and fished the sur¬ 
rounding waters for generations, learning through years of 
experience to meet the difficulties of island life. By means 
of hard work, thrift and caution they gradually prospered 
till at last they achieved the assurance of moderate success. 
On this basis of assurance they came in time to erect other 
structures than farm-houses and cattle-pens, and Melton 
became stately. Its people no longer fished or farmed 
with their hands; alien peoples came to do that work for 
them, and the natives dealt instead in the stocks and bonds 
of several corporations thus erected. There is the Co¬ 
operative Creamery, the Island Produce Exchange, the 
Transportation Corporation, which operates the little 
ferry, the Feed and Fertilizer Company, and the Island 
Purchasing Service. Together they form a benevolent 
trust; the original motive behind them was a commendable 
desire for co-operation. 

Melton is an ideal summer retreat. It has atmos¬ 
phere, with its stately white houses and towering 
elms; it has the sea, with all its possibilities of pleasure; 
it has a sort of isolation which is an asset, for the basis 
2 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
of summer journeying is a desire of people to “get away— 
to get away from everything!” “City people” come to 
Melton in the summer and are happy toying with their 
several illusions. Some come to “rough it”; some for a 
taste of simplicity; some for the adventure of new con¬ 
tacts. But when the days begin to diminish in length, 
when the sea breezes begin to savour of autumn sharp¬ 
ness, the last of the “summer people” hasten back to 
the city and the sophistications that they really love, 
leaving Melton, richer and wiser, to care for itself alone 
through the long winter—to care for itself well, so that 
it shall be there, charming and isolated, when they want 
to see it again. 

Thus a summer and its transients had come and gone. 
The sombre days of autumn had followed; now winter 
lay over and about the Fist. Winter comes to the island 
in many ways: sometimes it descends with howling winds 
and squalls of sleet; sometimes it comes softly from land¬ 
ward, snowing steadily for two or three days and chang¬ 
ing magically every aspect of the earth, the sea and 
heavens; sometimes it comes just as a killing cold— 
withering, gnawing, inexorable. 

And always there is the wind—blowing, blowing. This 
January morning the wind was bitter with a kind of 
despair as it drove in off the sullen sea. Old man Santos 
felt the bitterness of it sifting through the many thick¬ 
nesses of his clothing. Behind him, through the rents 
in the cover of his cart, he heard its melancholy whistle. 
He sat immobile in the dusk of the morning and listened 
to the rhythmic beat of his horse's hoofs on the frozen 
roa d—the road that reached out across the island to the 
base of the Fist, whither he was bound. 

3 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

Both he and his old white horse were accustomed to 
this journey. Every morning, in summer and winter 
alike, they took into the village the milk of Santos’ cows. 
Having delivered it at the Co-operative Creamery, they 
drove back again, like the ghosts of a man and a cart and 
an old white horse, unseen of humanity, battered by the 
elements. 

Santos was Portuguese. He had come to America 
years ago, had gone to work as a farm-hand on the island, 
and had never left it. By work and thrift and singleness 
of purpose he had prospered; in time he came to own his 
own farm, his herd of cows became a credit to the com¬ 
munity; and now he was content to go on from year to 
year, living in simple prosperity, improving his farm and 
the quality of his herd, and putting more money into 
the bank. He was a very sane old man. He never 
pounded his chest and told how important he was; and 
he never outgrew his own people. 

“I prosper,” he said, with a smile on his dark old 
face, “because I obey God an’ Nature, I go to mass, 1 
avoid dissipation, an’ I work hard. I do not desire 
too much.” That was his whole philosophy of life, 
summarized. 

Now the wind was cutting down from the north, right 
into his face, seeping through his clothes, and chilling the 
scant flesh on his bones. In the village the houses broke 
the full sweep of the wind, while overhead the great trees 
moaned and thrashed in the dreary gale. But soon 
Santos emerged from the village, left the cold white 
houses and creaking trees behind. From the top of 
Price’s hill a wide panorama lay before him, a panorama 
not to be seen in the dusk of the morning, but clearly 
4 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
visible to his familiar knowledge. Straight away north¬ 
ward the drab reaches of the island spread, divided into 
irregular fields by irregular grey stone walls. Over to the 
left lay the silent bay and the city on its farther shore, 
where faint points of light shone wanly. To the right 
the plane of the sea, restless and bleak, spread to a line 
where it met the sky, gleaming now with a faint bright¬ 
ness. 

The old man drove down the hill and out across the 
rolling road, six long miles, with the wind in his face. 
Houses were scattered along the way, lonely and shiver¬ 
ing under gaunt trees; some of them looked weary and 
pitiful in their cold sleep, others showed a bright eye of 
lamplight and the first slow movements of the day. 
Here and there cows lowed in warm barns. In oc¬ 
casional sudden lulls of the wind he could hear the wash 
of great waves. And always, lost under all other sounds 
and silences, because of their familiar monotony, there 
went the regular clop-clop of his horse’s hoofs and the 
recurring squeaks of the off hind wheel of his cart. 

At last he came to the end of the rolling fields. For 
a moment he had a glimpse of the ocean, a welter of 
black madness; then the road dipped and he was in an 
alley —an alley across the frozen marshes, between low 
walls of dead reeds, where the wind whined and rattled 
like an army of ghosts about the stark bodies they had 
abandoned. 

"Get on, you!” Santos shouted to the horse, rousing 
himself and shielding his mouth with his hand. The 
old white horse tossed his head in irritation at the wind 
and plodded on as before. Soon they topped the rise 
out of the marshes. It was now almost light. Ahead of 
5 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
him Santos saw the bleak plain of the Fist rising against 
the pale sky, and at its base he could discern his own 
homestead, the grey buildings huddled together in the 
cold, and grey smoke whipping away from the chimney. 

Instinctively he urged the horse on again. They were 
making progress. Soon they were passing through the 
midst of a group of houses—the thirty-odd drab, un¬ 
painted, weather-stained houses of the Portuguese. It 
was an unlovely little settlement; many of the scattered 
building were no more than shacks—a collection of dreary 
habitations, sombre, desolate, dirty, depressing. Yet 
Santos was glad to be in the midst of them. The people 
within them were his own people. He knew them all 
and understood them; he had his place among them, and 
his own importance. There was stir and movement 
about, and the old man came to life in response to the 
life around him. Dogs barked at him familiarly; the 
uncombed heads of children appeared at windows; a man 
waved to him from the doorway of a shabby barn; he 
could hear the raucous voice of a woman scolding. The 
world had come to life at last. 

Old man Santos jerked on the reins and the horse took 
up a smarter pace. They crossed the wrist where the 
waters of the sea and the waters of the bay almost cut 
through the narrow strip of land that made a roadway, 
and soon he was in his own back yard. 

Joe came to meet him and began to loosen the harness 
of the blown old animal. Santos threw the reins on the 
horse’s back and got stiffly down out of the cart. 

“ ’S cold, Joe! Cold! An’ the win’s like a knife!” 

Joe smiled at him with flashing teeth and eyes. 

“Spring is cornin’ soon,” he called from the other side 

6 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
of the horse. “Soon you’ll be ploughin’/’ he said to the 
beast as he started after him toward the barn. 

Old man Santos stood and watched the lad go, flapping 
his arms meanwhile to loosen their stiffness. Then he 
smiled and shook his head at the indomitable optimism of 
youth, pulled off his gloves, and went into the house. 

Mrs. Santos met him in the kitchen with bright volubil¬ 
ity. The air was thick with the fumes of good cooking. 
The warmth sent twinges through his half-frozen feet. 
He sat down at the table and began to eat, and soon he 
took on new vitality. The first clear gleam of the morn¬ 
ing sun shone in a bar along the floor. Joe came across 
the yard, singing in his tenor voice a stave from a song— 
something about a love-nest—and vaguely it completed 
Santos’ content. As the lad’s voice mounted against the 
towering incline of the cliff and was echoed back, wind- 
whipped, upon itself, the old man smiled into his coffee- 
cup. 

A moment later Joe came into the kitchen to breakfast. 
He was handsome in a dark way, with a rather thin face, 
black hair and fine eyes; his body was a splendid crea¬ 
tion of whose beauty he was not conscious—broad at the 
shoulders, long in torso, slim and supple, and strong. 

As he washed his face and hands at the sink, old man 
Santos called to him, without turning from his own 
affairs at the table, “What you singin’ ’bout so early?” 

“Early? No! All day long!” Mrs. Santos exclaimed 
over her fat shoulder. 

Joe smiled and bent over the basin. 

“I make too much racket for you?” he asked. 

“Ah, no! But tell me this—why you singin’?” 

The lad wiped his face on the roller-towel and 

7 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
shrugged. “I do’ know/' he said. "Jus’ for fun.” 

“It is the youth,” Mrs. Santos suggested with a laugh. 

“Ah? Not always,” the old man remarked, with a sly 
look. “Sometimes it is—the love.” 

Joe sat down at the table, and as the old man looked 
at him closely the blood began to show under the lad's 
clear skin. Santos perceived it; his eyebrows went up 
and his smile became a laugh that emphasized the count¬ 
less wrinkles in his old dark face. 

“Look!” he cried to his wife, pointing with his knife 
at the victim of his shrewdness. “Look! He is in love. 
Only love will make a man sing before breakfast.” 

Joe's eyes fell before the probing gesture and the 
laughter of the old man. Then, smiling stiffly, he chal¬ 
lenged, “You say so, but that don’t prove it.” 

“You see? You see?” the other cried, turning to his 
wife. “He does not deny it. No! How could he?” 

“That would be easy,” Joe suggested, with a shrug. 

“Ah! Yes? Maybe not. Sometimes a man does not 
deny. An' then,” he went on, “an’ then he is in love.” 

Joe made no response, but took on an air of unconcern, 
eating heartily, with large gestures and a good appetite. 
His face still burned, for the old man’s shaft had struck 
him fair. And Mrs. Santos, perceiving that the lad was 
in love, was filled with a strange, fluttering desire to pro¬ 
tect him. 

“More coffee?” she said to her husband. 

He passed his cup and she poured the dark liquid 
into it. 

“Look!” Santos began again. “Look! He has been 
here eight—ten days, an’ already . . .” He made a wide 
gesture, throwing both hands out as if to spread upon the 
8 


** AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
table for his wife’s inspection the astounding results of 
the young man’s activities in the brief period of ten 
days. 

“You want sugar?” she asked, passing the bowl. 
“Drink. Let Joe alone. How could he be in love in 
ten days?” 

“As good as ten years, if all is right. Why not?” 

“Bah!” she exclaimed. “Here? On the Fist?” 

“Anywhere,” he answered. “Yes, even on the Fist.” 

“Bah!” she exclaimed again. “Don’ be foolish! Cof¬ 
fee, Joe?” 

As Joe passed his cup Mrs. Santos winked at him 
slyly, with a vigorous little toss of her head. Thus she 
expressed her sympathy and her adherence to his cause. 
Joe’s gaze fell before that demonstration; he knew that 
he had won her allegiance because she perceived the truth 
in what her husband had said. 

The old man rose from the table, filled and lighted his 
pipe, and sat in the sunlight smoking. Soon Joe fin¬ 
ished his breakfast too. Mrs. Santos began to clear away 
the dishes. 

“Want me t’ go t’ town for feed?” the boy asked. 

“We got enough till next week. Better cart some sand 
f’r the barn.” 

“I could do both to-day.” 

Santos looked up at him shrewdly. “So?” he said. 
“So?” Then, after a pause, he asked, “You like here, 
Joe?” 

At that Mrs. Santos ceased her rattling of the dishes. 

“Sure. It’s all right,” Joe said. 

“You think you’ll stay? Think you’ll stay all summer, 
maybe?” 


9 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 

Joe shrugged. "I’m satisfied/’ he said. “You’re the 
boss. It’s up t’ you.” 

“You stay, then,” Santos said slowly. “An’ Joe! You 
think we need feed to-day?” 

The lad’s shoulders moved in their customary gesture. 
“Sand’s wet now,” he suggested. “It’s a good day t’ go t’ 
town.” He looked very unconcerned, very matter-of- 
fact. He extracted a cigarette from a package and rolled 
it in his fingers. Santos regarded him smilingly. 

“I guess you got t’ go t' town, eh, Joe?” 

Joe looked at him frankly. The boss was a very dis¬ 
cerning old man. “I got t’ get some things,” the boy 
confessed, his teeth flashing in a smile. 

Santos nodded. “Take the grey pair an’ the dump- 
cart,” he said. “An’ don’t forget the blankets—it’s cold. 
You got money, Joe?” 

“Yuh, I got some.” 

Joe lighted a cigarette and went out into the cold 
clear sunlight. Soon the dump-cart was bumping along 
the rutted road toward town, but its rattling racket was 
drowned under the swelling notes of the song the lad 
flung out across the windy marshes. 

What he had to get in Melton was a new neck-tie, for 
Joe had fallen in love with a girl. 


10 


II & 


Joe Silviedra was twenty, but he seemed mature beyond 
his years. He could do any physical labour easily and 
his stamina was inexhaustible. He was never tired out; 
after a day of hard work in the fields or in the winter 
woods he would eat voraciously and be ready for any 
jollification the evening might offer. 

His people were small farmers—gardeners—in Ver¬ 
mont. His father had died from a gangrened wound re¬ 
ceived and improperly attended during the winter log¬ 
ging. Joe's brother had then, at once, married his girl 
and brought the buxom bride to live at the home place, 
and Joe had soon found that there was nothing for him 
there but trouble, because the alluring proximity of his 
brother’s wife was a constant menace to the decency of 
his intentions. 

She was a young woman of extraordinary vigour, im¬ 
mense vitality and surging passions—physically insati¬ 
able. And she was aware of Joe. One day as she handed 
him a cup of coffee while they were at the table together, 
she noticed his hand shake; she recognized that uncon¬ 
trolled movement for the trembling of his very strength; 
it made her gay, made her laugh, made her eager and 
daring. 

Joe liked his brother; he had no intention of running 
the risk of any sort of trouble, and he could have man- 
11 





£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
aged very well if the woman had let him alone. But the 
young fellow and the situation fascinated her; she wanted 
to see precisely what she could do to him, wanted to see 
just how much he could stand. As he withdrew before 
her deft and inquisitive advances she became more in¬ 
quisitive, more deft, more eager, till it seemed to Joe that 
she was about him everywhere and all the time. He 
could think of nothing but the swaying lines of her body 
as she moved about the house, her lips that smiled at him, 
half in mockery, her eyes with their continual challenge, 
her voice that sang love-songs raucously. 

And at last she found the limit of his endurance. It 
was a sleepy Sunday afternoon in summer. The woman 
had taken her bath in the kitchen—there was no bath¬ 
room in the house; her husband was asleep on the shaded 
front porch; Joe was dressing to go into the town. As she 
passed his room on her way to her own she paused at the 
door, which was open. 

“Goin’ out?’' she asked. 

"Yuh." 

'Turn roun’ an’ let me see how you look/' 

Joe turned, dressed but for his coat and hat, and 
faced her. A red cotton kimono hung about her body. 
In the dim light of the hallway her lips and eyes glowed, 
her face and throat and arms were luminous. 

'‘Here/’ she said, advancing into the room, "let me fix 
your tie.” 

As she approached him the thin kimono fluttered in the 
breeze from the open window, indicating, half revealing 
the mysterious lines and contours of her rich young 
body. She fussed with his tie while the odours of her 
warm washed body rose about him, and his eyes caught 
12 


# an island chronicle # 

glimpses of her bosom beneath the hands moving at his 
throat. 

“You got a girl, Joe?” she asked, looking into his face 
with a mocking smile. 

“No,” he said gruffly. “I got no time for girls.” 

She laughed at that—a quiet laugh. “Wise of man!” 
she mocked. As part of the mockery she leaned against 
him lightly. His limbs twitched under the pressure. He 
tried to move away, but she held him with firm fingers at 
his tie. 

Joe surrendered—caught her in his arms and crushed 
her body into his, felt her relaxed flesh tremulous under 
his moving hands. Her face was raised with a strange 
expression of amusement, curiosity and astonishment. 
He kissed her again and again—her lips, her throat, her 
shoulder, her bosom. He couldn’t draw her close enough 
or hold her tight enough. Something in him reached 
out to absorb her completely. He was mad, palpitating, 
passionately ravenous. 

She was satisfied with that surrender—satisfied but 
startled, and a faint fear stirred in her. She hastened 
to withdraw from the contact, for she was not yet ready 
to surrender herself. She put up her hands and pushed 
him off—held him farther and farther away; then as he 
stood there stupidly, regaining his self-control—roused, 
unsatisfied, angry with himself—she smiled and patted 
him on the shoulder, left him, and went down the dark 
hall, with guilty quietness, to her own room. 

The next day Joe drew out of the bank all the money 
he owned, put the things he wanted into a suit-case, and 
left the house very quietly in the night. 

On the discovery of his departure his old mother was 

13 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
voluble with despair; his brother was angry; the woman 
was chagrined—disappointed and sorry. She hadn’t 
meant to drive him away. No, certainly she hadn’t 
meant to do that. The place seemed dreary without him. 

Joe went to New York and worked for a time on the 
West Side, in the shipping-room of a candy factory, a 
place of warm sweet odours. Crowds of careless good 
fellows worked there, mostly Italians, a few Germans, a 
few Irish. There were swarms of girls too, girls of mixed 
nationalities and varying degrees of comeliness and virtue. 
Joe was a careless good fellow with all of them. He liked 
New York. There were countless new experiences for 
him here, and complete freedom for testing them. He 
took everything as it came, throwing inhibitions to the 
winds; he became familiar with the girls, gambled and 
drank with the fellows. 

Just before Christmas the factory closed down; the 
workers were scattered; Joe found himself alone and 
lonely. He couldn’t return to the Vermont farm, but he 
suddenly wanted to. New York seemed to him hideous 
and threatening. He fled from it and returned to New 
England. 

In the smaller city he had gone into a motion-picture 
theatre to be warm. It was late in a January afternoon; 
soon he’d go out into the streets again, wander around 
awhile, eat, and find a room. To-morrow he’d look for a 
job. A young fellow sat beside him enjoying the picture, 
moving in his seat in response to the developments on 
the screen—eager, a little tense. When the customary 
final close-up kiss faded out he relaxed all at once and 
settled back in his seat. Joe yawned and stretched him¬ 
self. The young fellow looked at Joe and smiled. 

14 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

“Good pi'ture, eh?” he said. 

Joe yawned again and nodded. 

“That guy’s strong, an’ some fighter, I’ll say.” 

“I’m sick o’ seein’ him,” Joe stated. 

“D’you go t’ the movies a lot?” the boy asked. 

“Sure. Don’t you?” 

“No. There ain’t no movies on the island.” 

“What island’s that?” 

“The Fist.” 

The announcing title of a picture was thrown upon the 
screen. Joe reached under the seat for his hat. 

“I saw this,” he said. “Guess I’ll get out.” 

“Guess I’ll go too,” the lad said. “I saw it.” 

Outside in the dusk Joe lighted a cigarette and gave one 
to the boy, and they turned down the street together. 
“Where’s this Fist?” Joe asked. 

“Just off the coast a way. I’ve been there pretty near 
a year.” 

“What doin’?” 

“Fishin’.” 

“Fishin’l” 

“Sure. D’you fish?” 

“No. I farm.” 

“There’s lots o’ farmers on the island.” 

“Yuh?” 

“They got lots o’ cows.” 

“Yuh?” 

After a brief silence the lad asked, “You lookin’ f’r 
a job?” 

“Yuh.” 

“You could get a job on the island, I guess. 01’ man 
Santos needs a hand.” 


15 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 

“Any good?” 

“I do’ know. Santos is all right, I guess.” 

“When you goin’ back?” 

“I ain’t goin’ back. Had a fight with my boss.” 

“Yuh?” 

“Sure. He got sick o’ me an’ I got sick o’ him. We 
couldn’t stand each other any longer. Y’ see, in the 
winter he don’t fish—just bums aroun’ the house eatin’ 
an’ sleepin’. Sometimes he has a housekeeper, some 
dame he gets in t’ feed him an’ keep him company. This 
winter he didn’t get no woman—took me into the shack 
t’ live with him instead. I almost went crazy listenin’ 
t’ his bull and his snorin’. I’m glad t’ be out o’ there. 
I’ll get a job all right!” 

“What’s the guy’s name?” 

“Vinti.’ 

“An’ what’s the other guy’s—the farmer’s?” 

“Santos. Why don’t you try for a job with him?” 

“Maybe I will to-morrah. What’s your name?” 

“Angelo—Angelo Vieira.” 

They drifted into talk of other matters. Later they 
had supper together, went to another movie, hired a room, 
and slept like brothers in the same bed that night. 

The next day, following Angelo’s directions, Joe came 
to the Fist. It was a cold morning. The sunlight lay 
clear on the earth, brilliant but without warmth. The 
wind came off the water with a whipping gaiety, invig¬ 
orating and heady. As Joe waited for the ferry, he 
leaned over the railing of the little wooden pier. Be¬ 
fore him lay a spread of blue water with white-tipped 
waves rolling in the sunlight. Beyond, the island 
stretched, north and south, a long low barrier with the 
16 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 

Fist bulking high against the sky. Beyond the island, 
he knew, moved the mysterious empty sea. 

Joe tried to imagine what life on the island might be 
like. The place looked lifeless. Nothing, he thought 
vaguely, could ever happen to him there. It would be 
as dead as the Vermont farm. He smiled at himself— 
waiting for a boat to take him over to all that deadness. 
Yet he sensed faintly, with some antennae of intuition, 
that he was going forward to meet something, and he 
wondered vaguely what it might be. He supposed it 
might be some good thing; he put aside all thought 
that it might be any bad thing; of course there 
would be women in it—or perhaps one particular 
woman. 

The little boat drew in at last, and he went aboard. 
Later he walked out over the bright windy road to the 
Fist. As he rose out of the marshland the little com¬ 
munity of the Portuguese lay before him—the shabby 
houses and shacks, with henneries and piggeries behind 
them. 

In the road, where the sunlight fell and the wind was 
still, three women stood talking, each one of them the 
side of an irregular triangle. The one whose back was 
turned to Joe was an old woman, as he could see from 
the way the curves of her broad figure sagged and fell 
together. Her dress, a faded garment, was divided in a 
horizontal curve, somewhat above the middle of its length, 
by the equator of an invisible apron-string. About her 
head she wore a rusty green plaid shawl. Her feet were 
planted wide apart; her left hand nuzzled into her plump 
hip. She was a married woman; she was the Stout 
Gossip. 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

Her companion on the left was the Washed-Out Gos¬ 
sip, a creature spare of stature, vague of countenance, 
and of a personal colourlessness amounting almost to 
invisibility. She was a widow, and to save herself from 
the annihilation of ultimate insignificance she went al¬ 
ways clothed in shabby black. She stood now, silently 
gazing into the face of the woman who was speaking, 
apparently absorbing information like some extraor¬ 
dinary genus of sponge. Actually, information passed 
through her consciousness without impediment, and only 
a very few items—facts so definite as to have no fluidity 
—became imbedded in her brain. 

The third woman was tall and spare to emaciation. 
She was the Thin Gossip, the oldest spinster on the island. 
She had a harried appearance, as if run to the verge of 
extinction by an insatiable curiosity. Her clothes were 
old-fashioned and ludicrous, but one was arrested by 
her face. Her eyes were large and dark and brilliant, 
her mouth and nose were strong. The animation of 
youth still lingered in her, but it had become acidulous 
in quality. 

The Gossips were discussing the meagre news of the 
place. The Spinster was talking of Giorgio Vinti’s quar¬ 
rel with his boy—Angelo. Suddenly she paused in the 
middle of a sentence and gazed down the road. 

So intense was her gaze, the Stout Gossip and the 
Washed-out Gossip both turned and looked with keen 
curiosity at the young fellow who was approaching. Joe 
was abashed by the intensity of their regard and passed 
them by with as great a show of unconcern as possible. 
Like smoothly swinging swivels they slowly turned as he 
18 


# AN AND CHRONICLE <* 
passed along, keepin lim always in the centre of their 
field of vision. 

At the second hoi; several children were playing on 
the steps. They, paused and gazed at him with 
round eyes. As he op reached, a small girl called to 
him a bold Joe smiled and stopped. “Hello, 

everyone/’ he saic Tell me— where does ol’ man 
Santos live?” 

The children i to the base of the Fist, vieing 
with one anothe ir e shouted exhibition of their local 
knowledge. 

“Good!” Joe crie< icking his information out of the 
treble tumult, nd the place.” Then he went 

along the road agai. surrounded and pursued by the 
calls of the children. 

Half an hour late id man Santos lent Joe a pair of 
overalls and put hii work, milking and feeding the 
cows. 

When the last chc : had been done for the day the 
old fellow heaved a >;n of contentment —his new man 
was a good man, “1- c’n only hold on t’ him!” he said 
to his wife. “If I c’r nly make him stay!” 

Joe was tired, but e had gone out for a stroll in 
the great darkness. he looked up at the stars and 
listened to the voices c he sea, a strange content settled 
about him — as if he r.d found at last something that 
he had been looking :r as if he had come home after 
long wanderings, ling rose out of the earth, silent 

and strong, and fille im with peace. The past was 
gone; New York seemd very far away, both in time 
and space. It was as he had escaped from something; 
19 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ,# 
but there was nothing for him to escape from, he knew— 
no brightness, no darkness, of good or bad, no high light 
of any sort in his uneventful past of sufficient impor¬ 
tance to cast a shadow. 

Nevertheless, the present seemed to hold a quiet 
promise. Somewhere in the distance a bell-buoy rolled 
slowly on the winter sea; its tolling touched his ear, 
melancholy and vaguely sad. He stood in the cold,- 
listening—hearing the wind go purring by, the sea in 
irregular rhythms, the bell faintly mourning—and sud¬ 
denly a surge of elation swelled in his breast. He wanted 
to laugh, wanted to shout—for no reason that he could 
think of. 

He turned back toward the house at last, and as he 
did so a voice came to him out of the sky, out of the 
night—the clear rich tones of a man's voice singing. It 
was somehow mysterious in that wide emptiness. About 
him was the immensity of the universe—sea and land and 
starry sky—and that clear voice, the symbol of all the 
hopes and fears, the dreams and loves and agonies of 
humanity. 


20 


III 


It was after mass on his first Sunday on the island that 
Joe encountered the community. The little house of 
God was filled with a dead gloom, its cold sombreness 
intensified by two chilly points of candlelight on the 
altar. The benediction was pronounced and the congre¬ 
gation knelt as Father Pasquale—a gentle little man— 
bore the Host reverently from the sanctuary. Then the 
people crowded out into the windy sunlight. 

Half a dozen young fellows gathered before the door 
in a careless group, smoking cigarettes and watching the 
women pass, smiling as some spoke to them, calling to 
others who failed to noticed their presence. 

Joe joined this group and lighted a cigarette. He was 
aware of many eyes upon him; he had the feeling that 
these people had already heard about him and were gaz¬ 
ing now to see what manner of man he was. He turned 
and looked out across the bay, and thought of the city 
he had left a few days ago, with its white Capitol on a 
hill; dreamed thus a few minutes, mentally isolated 
from the movement about him. 

“Hello, Rosie/' he heard a youth behind him say; then 
two others called cheerily, “Hello, Angela!” 

He turned and faced the thinning assemblage. Groups 
of three or four stood here and there about the grey, 
weather-beaten chapel, discussing, some eagerly, some 
21 


& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
casually, the past and the future in a jumble cf 
generalities. 

As Joe turned he caught a glimpse of a young woman's 
eyes upon him. She was tall and vigorous of body, 
simply dressed, with a good-looking face and dark eyes 
that seemed capable of seeing all things clearly. As he 
looked at her she turned away, unhurried and without 
embarrassment, and proceeded down the narrow road 
alone. But almost immediately a younger girl followed 
and called to her. The tall one paused and turned, en¬ 
countering Joe's eyes again as her look swung in a long 
arc to greet her friend. 

“Who's that girl?” Joe asked young Rosario, whom he 
had already met on the beach. 

“The tall girl? That's my sister Rosie.” 

“Yuh?” Joe said indifferently. “Who's the other?” 

“Oh! Angela Grania—a peach!” 

Joe smiled. 

And then his eyes were caught by a white flutter at 
his feet. He stooped and picked the fluttering thing 
from the ground—a little white cotton handkerchief with 
a pink border. 

Erect again, he saw that the girl Angela was coming 
back toward the group; and, grasping the fact that the 
handkerchief belonged to her, he stepped forward and met 
her as she approached. 

“This yours?” he asked, holding out the bit of white 
cotton. 

“Yes,” she said, reaching her bare hand forward and 
taking it. “Thanks. The wind whipped it right away 
from me.” 

Joe lifted his cap and smiled automatically into her 
22 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
smiling eyes. As she finished speaking he flapped his cap 
upon his head again and watched her move away. 

He was aware that Rosie Rosario had waited for her 
friend and had watched him as he performed his little 
act of gallantry. Now her eyes held a pleasant light— 
for him; not a light of amusement, but a light of interest 
and appreciative appraisal. 

Joe turned back to the group of young fellows, a little 
confused, and noted their collective bantering smile. He 
took his place among them and tried to hide his self- 
consciousness. No one spoke. 

“Well,” Joe said at last, “I got t’ work!” 

“Me too,” Rosario chimed in. 

They moved off together; the group disintegrated and 
dispersed. A short distance down the road Joe over¬ 
took Santos and his wife on their homeward way, and 
waving his hand absentmindedly to Rosario, he walked 
along with them. 

There were several unusual phases of that little episode 
of the handkerchief. In the first place, handkerchiefs 
were not commonly used by the ladies of the Fist; but 
Angela Grania had spent a portion of her youth in the 
small country school that stood two miles up the road 
toward Melton (one of the mixed blessings that the Portu¬ 
guese accepted in this strange land of prosperity), and 
among other things she had there acquired the ability 
to carry a handkerchief without too great ostentation. 
It was one of the items of her “dressing-up”; she always 
carried it when she went to church. 

And a young man tipping his hat was an extraor¬ 
dinary sight at the Fist—it was not often done except for 
23 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

Father Pasquale. With women the young men were 
usually familiar merely. The act had irrevocably 
Jnarked Joe as an outsider, a man of the world, a sort of 
dandy. It roused the secret admiration and envy of 
his audience—it was the index to so many vague and 
splendid things—all that one might conceive metropoli¬ 
tan life and experience to mean. 

The Gossips were occupied with a new dramatic theme, 
a theme that offered innumerable possibilities of interpre¬ 
tation and development. 

But the principals—Joe and Angela—were unable to 
look at the occurrence objectively. Heretofore—espe¬ 
cially since his sojourn in New York—girls in the mass 
had had no secrets from Joe. In the realm of morals he 
had nothing to boast of but a shallow, crude cynicism. 
Because his interest in women was not profound it had 
always been easy enough to judge most of them accord¬ 
ing to his negative code, simple enough to “size them 
up” and catalogue them with sufficient exactness. 

Now, for the first time in his life, his code had failed 
to apply. Here was a girl so splendid as to be unknown 
to his experience. He was moved in a manner that he 
could not understand. Being outside his experience, she 
was wonderful, stirring his curiosity and his interest. 
He could pronounce no judgment on her whatever, be¬ 
cause he felt that any attempt to put into phrases what 
she seemed to him to be would result in an amazed 
dumbness. He did not attempt it; his egotism withdrew 
from the attempt and wrapped itself in contemplation 
of the vision of her as in a delicious, luminous silence 
—a silence dominating his physical being, his men- 
24 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 

tality, sending him about his work in a lethargy of 
preoccupation. 

The other girl—Rosie Rosario—he understood well 
enough whenever he remembered the glances of her 
splendid eyes, and he catalogued her promptly, as an 
expert, sure of the characteristics of his specimen. From 
time to time a beam of remembered light from Rosie’s 
eyes penetrated the luminous haze in which his being was 
immersed, rousing his mind to interest and stirring his 
physical inertia with a gentle thrill. 

But always his faculties settled back into the stillness 
of contented wonder. Continually he saw a little bare 
brown hand extended toward him in a gesture of shy 
candour, and in his ears there lingered the memory of 
a wind-whipped voice whose words he could not recall. 

And Angela, during the days that followed that en¬ 
counter, lived in a land of faery. She was one of those 
daughters of the poor who come into the world and grow 
to maturity in a simplicity and ignorance amounting 
almost to unconsciousness. Nothing but the smallest 
details of routine existence ever came near her. She was 
naive, without ambition, unread and superstitious, gentle 
and unaggressive. She was, too, physically lovely. 
Clearly, she was destined to marry and become the 
mother of children whom she would serve. 

Now visions that had nothing to sustain them in the 
facts of the physical world added daily to her beauty. 
Never again would she gather from dreams such fresh, 
keen joy. Her body pulsed and glowed; she was like 
a clear flame burning in the island’s desolation, un¬ 
touched by frosts and winds. It was this still, bright 
25 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
flame of vitality, even more than her youth and loveli¬ 
ness, that had attracted Joe on Sunday morning. 

He had removed his cap—it all began with that. She 
had seen the black plume of his hair curled over his 
temple, had heard his voice that seemed so strange and 
wonderful, had noted the look of half-serious interest in 
his clear brown eyes. For a moment she had been un¬ 
comfortably conscious of the depth of that look—for 
a moment she had been disturbed, for life had not yet 
taken on intensity for her. Now, as the days went by, 
however, she recalled Joe’s eyes as clearly as she could, 
clung to the significance of their expression, absorbed it 
as a strengthening emotional food. Day by day she grew 
in beauty, nourished by it; she beheld the material world 
about her in a golden vagueness. 

Angela lived in a shabby house that faced the road 
from the east but stood far back in a wide bare yard. 
Behind the house a dilapidated barn leaned weakly in 
the wind. Southward from these buildings the land 
sloped gently down to the marshes in a gradual wide 
field lying for ever bare to sun and dew. This was 
Ramon Grania’s garden; on this slope, too, stood his 
vineyard. 

Ramon Grania, Angela’s father, was a silent man who 
sat as a spectator in the theatre of life, watched with 
continued interest the weary plot of daily existence un¬ 
fold before him, listened to the shabby actors speak 
their parts, accepted the judgments of the critics, and 
had very little to say about anything. Naturally a 
simple soul, he relied on his neighbours as the city man 
relies on his newspaper. He was an optimist, for, though 
26 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^8 
he had spent years in observing humdrum events, there 
lingered in his heart an unconscious hope that he would 
some time be present at the unfolding of an epic climactic 
and important. 

On the Saturday morning following Angela’s encounter 
with Joe, breakfast had been finished early, as usual, 
in the Grania house. Angela, in the kitchen, moved 
deftly from table to sink and stove and cupboard. The 
kettle of hot water for the dishes was singing on the 
stove. 

Angela paused in the act of pushing a chair against 
the wall beneath the window, abandoned the motion un¬ 
completed, and stood looking out over the dull landscape 
toward the sea. As she stood, absorbed in dreams, old 
man Santos’ white horse and wagon emerged out of 
the mists of the morning and, half hidden by the dead 
reeds, crept slowly across the marshes. Nothing could 
have been more drear and forlorn than that black and 
white unit of life moving with the slowness of pain 
across the winter desolation. Angela’s gaze followed it 
as it crawled wearily forward till, at last, it passed out 
of her range of vision. Then she smiled but did not 
stir, continued to stand there lost in dreams. 

She was roused by the sound of her mother approach¬ 
ing along the hall, and she quickly turned to the warm, 
dingy kitchen—descended from the heights of fancy to 
the mundane matter of washing dishes. 

Her mother burst into the room and cast a swift glance 
about. She was a wisp of a woman—small, thin, dark- 
skinned, old beyond her years. She moved swiftly al¬ 
ways, for ever hurried by a nervous energy too intense 
for the body that contained and served it. 

27 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

“What’re you doin’?” she cried. “Get t’ work, for 
God’s sake, an’ don’t be standin’ roun’ like a fool! 
You an’ th’ ol’ man’ll drive me crazy! I can’t do every¬ 
thing—in an’ out. Clear that sink in a hurry—I got 
t’ cook!” 

She was gone—out the kitchen door, admitting a cold 
blast of reality as she went, and could be heard crossing 
the yard toward the barn, calling raucously, “Ramon! 
Ramon, you! Ramon!” 

Angela proceeded at once with her work at the sink. 
Soon her mother, having given her commands at the 
barn, was back in the kitchen, gathering dishes and bak¬ 
ing materials from closet and cupboard, and mixing 
her dough with a deft but breathless haste. 

Angela escaped as soon as she could and went to her 
own little room down the hall. Alone, she began to 
dream again of an impossible world—a world at once 
serene and thrilling, filled with common tasks, but end¬ 
lessly shining with love. To-morrow would be Sunday; 
she would see him again! Then, grown temporarily 
practical, she brought her best clothes out from her nar¬ 
row cupboard—a dark-blue dress trimmed with cheap 
white lace; a brown felt hat with a green feather; her 
long brown coat; her white cotton gloves, which she 
placed conspicuously where she would be sure to remem¬ 
ber to wash them. 

Then she stood looking at herself in the stained mirror 
near the window. The examination filled her with sat¬ 
isfactions and despairs as she noted, in that reflection 
she knew so well, the things she was glad to see, the 
details she wished were different. On the whole, a 
healthy optimism ruled the inspection, for her vision 
28 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 

was lighted with the thrilling brightness that she had 
seen in the eyes of her lover. 

Suddenly her heart stood still, every sense became 
alert. She listened in a pain of intensity to a voice that 
came singing along the road—a loud, clear, joyful voice 
that swelled above the rumble of a dump-cart. 

Joe! 

As Angela listened her heart began to race, the blood 
pounded in her ears, half drowning the cadence of 
the song, her face became like a flame. She stole to 
the window and watched the cart creep out across the 
marshes. Scattered notes came faintly back upon the 
wind, and each one stabbed her like a sword—deep throb¬ 
bing wounds piercing her bosom with pain that was more 
than half delight. She bit her lips to still the surging 
of her passion; then, with a little gasping cry, she fell 
upon her knees beside the dingy bed and hid her burn¬ 
ing face in her arms. Her body trembled. She was 
ashamed of her emotion, yet she was mysteriously happy 
under its sweeping tumult, and she trembled with in¬ 
tensity while still that manly music echoed in her ears. 

But at last she grew calm. She raised her head and 
poised erect upon her knees, staring at the pictured 
Madonna who, from the security of her gilded frame, 
stared passively down upon the girl’s emotion. The last 
remnant of the storm swept over Angela as she looked. 
Her hands clenched upon the bed, her arms went tense, 
and throwing back her head, she whispered fiercely to 
the calm-faced Virgin, "I love him! I love him! I love 
him!” 

“Angela! Say! You sleepin’ there? Go get this 
broom an’ sweep!” 


29 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

The shriek of her mother’s voice startled the girl. She 
jumped to her feet and went about her dreary tasks. 

During the afternoon the wind rose in the north with 
a steady pressure, swirling the cold dry sand in delicate 
wreaths along the beaches and snapping frozen reeds in 
furrows across the marsh. The gaunt rheumatic trees 
were bent and twisted in one of Nature’s osteopathic 
processes. The promontory of the Fist stood up to meet 
a storm. As the darkness settled, it began to snow. 

All through the night the snow fell, at times quietly, 
covering the drab island as with a luminous blanket, 
at times swaying away before the wind in a curtain of 
sinuous texture that swept hissing into the sea. Toward 
morning the snow-fall ceased, and the day dawned over a 
transformed world. In the sunlight the land shone like a 
white flame in one’s eyes; the sea was black, stretching 
away in limitless dreariness. 

Very early Father Pasquale’s bell sounded out from 
the foot of the Fist, and soon the slow silhouettes of men 
and women came wandering across the narrow wrist to¬ 
ward the chapel. The wind was keen and clear. One 
planted one’s feet firmly and went as quickly as possi¬ 
ble; but the wind impeded progress, pulling at one’s 
clothes, pressing coats or skirts like sails against one’s 
knees. 

It was a physical relief to enter the house of God, 
for though it was cold there, it was still and the wind 
did not blow. 


30 


\s* IV & 


Joe was the first of the young men to enter the chapel 
and take a seat on the young men’s bench at the rear. 
Consequently he sat against the cold wall, and conse¬ 
quently, too, he was the last of the young men to leave 
after the service. His final prayer was a trifle longer 
than usual; he had to fumble a minute to find his cap; 
he paused to button his Mackinaw before going out into 
the wind—his fingers were slow with the cold. So it 
happened that just as he stepped into the aisle and 
turned toward the door Angela came along, and he found 
himself miraculously at her side. 

She was pulling on a snowy glove with diligence, her 
eyes upon her occupation. When the sleeve of Joe's coat 
inadvertently touched her shoulder she looked up at him 
with calm unconscious eyes, all innocent of his proxi¬ 
mity. But as soon as she saw him she smiled—an in¬ 
genuous smile—and he smiled back, with lively admira¬ 
tion in his eyes. 

He held the chapel door while she passed out, and 
watched her face while the sunlight set true colours in 
her cheeks and lips and eyes. He tossed his cap on his 
head and whispered laughingly, “Hold tight t’ your 
han’kerchief this mornin’!” She made no answer, but 
he saw the colour deepen in her cheeks. She half closed 
her eyes against the glare of the sunlit snow and the 
stares of the people huddled about the churchyard; and 
31 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ji 
together they paced along, running the gantlet of those 
questioning eyes. 

“I guess you find it pretty cold here on the island, 
huh?" Angela said at last. 

Joe shrugged. “I don’t mind," he said. “Do you?" 

“Oh, I’m use’ to it." 

“The wind, though—I don’t like so much wind 
blowin’." 

She laughed with delight at the sound of his voice, 
and he, encouraged, continued, “It’s like a hurricane." 

“Yes," she agreed, “even in summer." 

There was a pause in the dialogue. At last Joe asked, 
“You mind me walkin’ off with you like this?" 

She made no reply, but laughed and looked at him 
archly, as if to chide him for his affectation. 

“You lived here all your life?" he tried. 

“Yes." Then, hesitantly, she said, “It ain’t much like 
N’York, I guess." 

“No, N’York’s different," he agreed. 

“You like the Fist?" she asked. 

“That’s what Santos asked me yesterday. Sure. I 
like it all right." 

“You met Father Pasquale yet?" 

“No." 

“He’s a good man," Angela said devoutly, “an’ he loves 
us island people." 

Joe contemplated her serious eyes. “I don’t blame 
him," he said. 

She understood him; they laughed as they went on 
together. 

These tattered interchanges were meaningless in them¬ 
selves; but the great god Convention ruled over the 
32 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

Fist as over the rest of the world, and this chatter was 
a responsive litany which Angela and Joe said together 
in his honour, that the god might not be moved to wrath 
against them. It was a service of hypocrisy; for, more 
than anything else, Joe wanted to take Angela in his 
arms, without words and without laughter, to hold her 
body close while his soul emerged to seek hers. And, 
more than anything else, Angela’s blossoming woman¬ 
hood yearned to have him hold her so. But the great 
god Convention must not be forgotten; so they wasted 
their spirit in a pretence, waiting till their time should 
come. 

"That your house?” Joe asked as they approached it. 
He already knew where she lived. 

She nodded, glad that the place looked tidy under 
the shining snow. 

They stopped. 

"Well,” Joe said, "I got t’ get back an’ go t’ work. 
You goin’ t’ do anything this afternoon?” 

"No.” The blood rose into Angela’s cheeks again. 
He was going to propose something—something that 
would turn their present casual acquaintance into a re¬ 
lation substantial and important. 

"I’d like t’ go up to the top o’ the Fist,” he said. 
"Would you go too, an’ show me the way?” 

She looked back to where the curving rim of the Fist 
rose clear against the sky. "Yes,” she said. "I’ll go.” 

"About three o’clock?” 

"All right.” 

"Good-bye,” he said. He took off his cap and turned 
away, and she turned toward the house, filled with 
gaiety, elated. 


33 


& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

Two roads ran from the base of the Fist, rising and 
curving along the rim of the promontory till they met 
at the top in a small grassy plain. Above this windy 
level of grass several ledges of rock—the very strength 
of the cliff's substance—thrust up through the thin soil 
and spread their narrow platforms at varying levels, like 
tiers of seats where gods might sit to order the processes 
of earth and sea and sky. To avoid this outcropping of 
ledge the two roads curved inward and downward at 
the centre, so that their complete outline resembled the 
conventionalized heart on a lover’s valentine. 

This afternoon the roadways were obliterated by the 
snow, and the whole smooth plane of the cliff's incline 
shone like a silver shield. Joe and Angela took the 
right-hand way of ascent, kicking the dry snow into 
swirls that the wind swept to destruction over the rim 
of the cliff. 

Below, at a convenient window in the settlement, the 
three Gossips sat watching their progress across the windy 
brightness. Through many years the Gossips had 
watched countless insignificant tragedies and comedies, 
had seen the young grow old, loves fade, passions die; 
but they now looked without cynicism upon the winter 
idyll enacting before them. 

'They’re young," the Married Woman said. 

"Too young t’ be anything but fools," the Spinster 
retorted. 

"We ain’t young, but still we’re fools," murmured 
the Widow. 

"Well, there’s some fool things we don’t do any more," 
the Married One said complacently. 

34 


J* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 

“That’s because we’re old; not because we’re sensible,” 
the Spinster remarked. 

“D’you suppose he loves her?” the Washed-out Widow 
asked wistfully. 

“Sure he does!” the Thin One answered. “Look at 
’em—in broad daylight!” 

“Yes, look at ’em!” the Fat Gossip said. “They 
ain’t ashamed of each other or what they’re doin’.” 

“No, they ain’t ashamed.” 

“Look at ’em now!” the Fat One exclaimed, pointing. 

Joe and Angela had mounted to the highest point of 
the plain and stood, silhouetted against the bright blue 
heavens, looking out over empty space to the long, 
lonely line of cleavage between the sea and the sky. 
They were silent. Strange sensations stirred in Joe. 
Some mysterious power, entering through his eyes, 
groped in the hidden places of his soul and strove to drag 
out into expression something there that was ready to 
give voice. He wanted to cry out, humbly—in praise, 
in acknowledgment, in adoration; but his mind, incapa¬ 
ble of understanding, incapable of finding phrases to 
express this strange emotion, balked at incoherence and 
left him dumb. 

“I’d like t’ look over the edge,” Angela said at last, 
rousing from a reverie and looking into his face. 

He stirred then, looked down at her, and smiled. 

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll hold you safe.” 

“Wait!” 

She turned and rolled a snowball in her bare hands 
and then, moving toward the rim, she reached her left 
hand backward to him. He took a firm grip on her 
35 


jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
wrist and she swayed slowly out over space. With a 
light upward swing of her right hand she tossed the snow¬ 
ball over the edge. She was silent a minute, watching it 
plunge toward oblivion. 

“Plump!” she exclaimed. The snowball had dis¬ 
appeared. 

She laughed and he drew her back, drew her toward 
him, drew her into his arms. With her hands on his 
breast she looked up into his strange, dreamy face. 

“Let me kiss you, Angela?” he asked. 

“Are you honest?” she whispered. 

“Oh, yes! Yes! You’re not like other girls. I love 
you, Angel. I want t’ love you—let me kiss you, Angel.” 

He bent over her and she raised her face to meet his 
lips. The moment they had waited for had come. 
The great god Convention was forgotten. Joe held 
Angela close and kissed her again—exposed upon a 
pinnacle before the world. 

And then again, intensified to poignancy, that strange 
deep need to cry out—to acknowledge his affinity with, 
his dependence upon some vaguely sensed sublime and 
elemental power—moved him almost to tears. 

“Oh, God! God!” he whispered. 

He crushed Angela close, kissed her again in an inten¬ 
sity of devotion, and let her go. They stood in silence, 
side by side, at the brink of the cliff as at the brink of 
life, looking out across the lonely, passive sea. He put 
his arm about her shoulder and she rested her head 
against him. 

“Remember,” he said, “I’m goin’t’ call you Angel.” 

She looked up at him and smiled her approval; then 
they were quiet again. 


36 


Jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE Jt 

"I got t’ go back,” he said at last. 

“All right.” 

They started down by way of the westward road. 
From time to time Joe paused to throw snowballs into the 
face of the descending sun. They stood and watched the 
missiles shoot out in long curves, miss their mark, and 
vanish in the waters of the bay. The snow-field about 
them grew faintly pink, while lengthening shadows crept 
from behind each mound and drift. 


37 


& V & 


The Rosarios lived in one of the shabby two-story houses 
that lined the bay side of the road. The father, one son 
—Manuel—and Rosie still maintained the house; the 
mother was dead, and other children had married and 
gone to live on the mainland. 

Rosie Rosario had never married. She had never had 
the chance, for she was possessed by a temper amounting 
to madness, a rage that no man could stand. As a young 
girl she had been as adventurous as any boy, she had 
consorted with the boys of her age, sharing their games 
and escapades, learning their secrets and acquiring their 
point of view. In those days she had often battled with 
them, driving them amazed before her fury, cursing mean¬ 
while with ardour and brilliance, like one verily possessed 
of a devil. 

In consequence, all these boys, embryo husbands, knew 
her furies, and though as she grew in maidenhood she 
withdrew from their company and dissembled her rage, 
they all passed her by in the marriage market and chose 
for wives other women, less capable, perhaps, but less 
inclined to wrath. 

Rosie was now twenty-six, a number that spells “old 
maid’' in this island community of early marriages. Hers 
was a somewhat shameful status, implying some funda¬ 
mental disability, and her neighbours treated her, accord- 
38 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
ing to their temperaments, with supercilious gaiety or 
distant contempt. But none of them knew her status as 
well as Rosie knew it herself. Consciousness of her fail¬ 
ure in life had ground itself into her soul, had gradually 
transmuted the wildness of her fury into the stillness of 
despair, and would later transmute her despair into a cold 
hatred of the world. 

Rosie was made to work, to love, to hate, to live vigor¬ 
ously. The tides of life flowed strong and deep in her. 
As the wrath of her youth had expressed itself in wildest 
fury, so every other emotion that she felt found the ex¬ 
tremity of expression. When her sexual passions took 
fire (as they had on occasions in the past), the heat and 
flame swept like a forest conflagration—swift, insatiable, 
uncontrollable, till they burned themselves out, marking 
the girl and the companion of her passion with the deep 
scars of life too swiftly spent. 

When she saw Joe after mass on his first Sunday on the 
island, a faint breeze of desire blew the embers of her 
passive passions into a glow. Though he was no psy¬ 
chologist, Joe recognized this glow in the brief glimpse 
he had of her eyes; and though he was no physiognomist, 
he noted the scars of ancient fires upon her face. A swift 
brightness of recognition lighted his own glance, and 
Rosie, catching that spontaneous answer to her uncon¬ 
scious signal, felt the glow of passion in her bosom spread 
and brighten and leap into little wisps of flame. They 
understood each other without a word—temporarily. 

But during the following week Joe’s aspect was com¬ 
pletely changed for the girl by the alchemy of her con¬ 
templation. Looking deep, she had seen as the recent 
years went by that a good man is like a pocket of ore in 
39 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE & 
a mountain—his love and ideals, like precious metals, 
mixed and scattered in the slag and waste that are also 
normally there; and for more than anything else she had 
come to long for the gold of a decent love, had come to 
desire, with the ardour of the desperate, the peace and 
pride and assurance that such love brings to a woman. 
She came to see Joe as the possible bearer of this peace 
and pride and assurance for her. He was an outsider— 
he could not know her old-time wrath or her past in any 
of its aspects. She might win the slag and the gold of 
him together, might hold them in her arms and in her 
heart. She was filled with a new ambition. 

But when, on the following Sunday, she saw Joe’s eyes 
so gently, so caressingly fixed upon Angela’s face, her 
mood changed again—changed swiftly; the light died in 
her eyes, despair came flooding back into her soul. 

More than once in the past Rosie had seen a man turn 
away with a smile, leaving her standing by the slag-heap 
of his passions and her own, and carry the preserved pre¬ 
cious metal of his love to another woman. In Joe’s mean¬ 
ing looks she now sensed his proposal that together they 
build a new slag-heap; and at once the physical contact 
with his handsome young strength (which had at first 
thrilled her senses and her imagination) took on the as¬ 
pect of a wasting adventure on a bitter sea, a dull futility. 
She felt a pitiless cruelty in his proposal—it was a thing 
so different from what her heart desired. She was more 
hopelessly than ever aware of her failure as a woman. 

Under all these shifting emotional winds Rosie went 
calmly about her duties, keeping the house of her father 
in order, serving him and her brother Manuel. 

Manuel had been named after the last king of Portugal 

40 


# an island chronicle s . 

—not because any particular loyalty for his native land 
lingered in the older Rosario’s heart, but because he was 
impelled to express his delight that this last child of his 
vigour should be a son. It was a thing he had scarcely 
hoped for, and he marked the child with the highest sign 
of approval he could think of. He was always lenient 
with the boy, generous with him, hopeful for him without 
knowing what it was he hoped. Manuel stirred the only 
tenderness his father ever felt; he was the one thing in 
the world that the man loved. 

Bland, careless, egotistic, Manuel did his work about 
the place without question, because work was the custom 
of the community; but in all other matters he went his 
own way, regardless of laws. He managed to contrive 
numerous excursions into forbidden realms of excitement, 
and for a young man of limited opportunities he knew a 
great deal about certain sections of the mainland of ques¬ 
tionable reputation. 

Though there was a space of only eight years between 
their ages, Rosie and Manuel were a generation apart in 
thought. During Rosie’s life the modern woman had 
come into her freedom, but the-girl’s ideas had been defi¬ 
nitely fixed on the patterns of the past. Life had gener¬ 
ally become freer; with every reticence, restriction and 
reserve that woman abandoned, man abandoned some 
formality, reserve or consideration. The changed con¬ 
dition had become a fact, but Rosie did not understand 
it. Manuel, however, without thinking about it, grew 
up to understand the change with sufficient clearness to 
take advantage of it for his own ends. 

Her brother was, consequently, a source of envy to 
Rosie. She envied him his easy views of life, his freedom 
41 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE s 
of movement, his facility of escape from the conditions 
of life which they both hated. She sometimes spoke to 
him of her envy, seeking his sympathy, but rousing only 
his contempt. 

“I wish I could go off like you/' she remarked once. 

“Where d’you want t’ go?” he asked, smiling. 

“I do’ know,” she said. '‘Anywhere. I'd never stop!” 

“Why don’t you go?” he asked. It was half a sneer, 
for he knew how she was tied to the house, knew her lack 
of any other experience. Rosie looked at him with a 
faint disappointment, observing his lack of sympathy. 

“Say, Rosie, you make me sick!” he exclaimed, grown 
suddenly serious. “You stay here wishin’. What's the 
good o’ wishin’? Wishin' won't get you nothin'. Why 
don’t you go?” 

“How can I, Manuel?” 

“You can work, can’t you? Well, then, what're you 
afraid of? This place is fierce! An’ it’ll never change. 
If you want anything you got t’ go out an' get it. It'll 
never come t' you at the Fist.” 

“What can I do?” she asked. 

“You got t' work, but you wouldn't have t' work harder 
than you do here, an’ you'd get more for it.” 

After a pause he continued, “I’m goin’t’ get out in the 
spring. I can’t stand any more o’ this. Don’t you say 
nothin’!” 

“Where you goin'?” she asked. 

“I do’ know yet. N’York, I guess. But you won’t go; 
you're afraid.” He spoke disdainfully. 

“I guess I am,” she admitted, depressed at the thought 
of his projected escape. 

He caught and held her eyes a moment as he stood in 
42 


J* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 
the doorway on his way out. He was smiling significantly 
and his hat was set at a rakish angle on his head. He let 
his eyes move deliberately over his sister's body and re¬ 
turn to her face, as she stood watching him. 

“Well, you needn't be scared!" he remarked, still smil¬ 
ing; then he closed the door and was gone. 

Rosie watched him cross the yard to the little green¬ 
house—young, careless, debonair. Her face was flushed 
and her soul was sickened at his suggestion. Every man 
she met seemed ready to drag her away from her dream of 
married decency; even her brother reminded her of possi¬ 
bilities which she wanted to forget. She became con¬ 
scious of the sex-brutality of men. She knew that she 
could not leave the Fist because that brutality would de¬ 
stroy for ever her high ambition. Manuel might go away 
into the world, because he would there be the dominating 
brute; if she should go she saw that she would become 
the victim of the brutality of his kind. 


43 


VI J* 

Winter lay upon the island; the great face of the Fist 
was patched with snow; but February was now far ad¬ 
vanced. A new quality moved in the winds that billowed 
across the waters like waves of an immense invisible sea. 
The spring was approaching, but still immeasurably far 
away. 

The Portuguese settlement was busy with excitement. 
Broad women went visiting from house to house at unac¬ 
customed hours, and gathered in groups in the roadway, 
with aprons over their heads, talking volubly. 

Of all the women, the Gossips were the most calm. 
Soon after dinner they had taken up a position on the 
steps of the Married One’s house, where the sun would 
shine all the afternoon, and there they held a sort of re¬ 
ception to the ladies of the community. They were sure 
of the arrival of their guests—sure of their audience. 

Soon Mrs. Lemos came along the road, wheeling her 
daughter’s baby in a carriage and carrying her daughter’s 
older child—a little boy—on her arm. She wore a blue- 
checked apron over her cotton skirt, a red sweater over 
her waist, and on her head an old black felt hat, tied un¬ 
der her chin with a tape, against the wind. She was 
old and she came slowly, whispering to the child in her 
arms. As she approached the women seated on the door¬ 
step, she paused and called out to them, "It’s a good 
day!” 


44 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

“It is a good day, Mrs. Lemos,” the Widow responded. 

Mrs. Lemos set the boy down from her arm, wheeled 
the shabby carriage sidewise to the steps, and sat down 
stiffly at the feet of the trio. 

“It is good—the sun,” she remarked, with a broad 
smile. 

Nobody replied. The Gossips watched her, awaiting 
their moment. 

“It is good for me an’ good for the children,” Mrs. 
Lemos went on. 

“It’s good for us all,” the Fat Gossip said. 

“To be sure!” the old woman agreed. “I get older 
every day an' I think only of myself an' my own.” She 
smiled broadly again to assure them that she meant no 
offence. “I used t’ be interested in things that happened 
all over the world,” she went on, “but now I am not even 
interested in kings any more.” 

The others listened to her passively. 

“Kings ain’t what they use’ t’ be,” Mrs. Lemos con¬ 
tinued, half to herself. “Nothin’ is the way it use’t’ be. 
I am not myself the same.” 

The Thin Gossip smiled as she listened. Then she 
asked evenly, “Did you know that Giorgio Vinti is goin’ 
t’ be married?” 

“Eh? What! God defend us!” Mrs. Lemos cried. 

She lifted her hands in horrified astonishment. 

“Married?” she asked after a minute. “Giorgio!” 

The Gossips sat and laughed at the success of their 
coup. Here was a woman who thought a moment ago 
that the world held no interest for her, and now she 
was filling the winter air with her exclamations of 
amazement. 


45 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

“It is a sin!” Mrs. Lemos went on. “Father Pasquale 
will never allow it! Who's he goin' t' marry?” 

“Nobody knows. He don't know himself.” 

“Don’t know!” cried Mrs. Lemos. 

“No,” the Fat Gossip volunteered; “but he’s tired o’ 
livin’ alone, an’ he's goin’t’ find a wife.” 

“God pity the woman!” 

“Don’t you think he’ll make a good husban’?” the 
Spinster asked. 

“Good husband! I tell you it’s a sin!” 

“He’s rich an’ he’s got a good business,” the Fat 
Woman said. 

“He is a beast!” Mrs. Lemos declared. 

“Even so, he’ll get a wife if he wants one,” the Thin 
Gossip declared. 

“He will, of course, God help us!” Mrs. Lemos agreed. 
“Women are fools!” 

They were all quiet then for a few minutes, busy with 
their thoughts. At last the old woman asked: 

“Is it true?” 

The three nodded. 

“I must go,” Mrs. Lemos said rising. “I must tell 
Mary. It is a sin. Vinti is not fit to look at a woman!” 

She called her grandson from his absorbing occupation 
of chasing an indignant red hen, and moved down the 
road, swiftly for her, toward the house of her daughter. 

She had scarcely passed out of earshot when Rosie 
Rosario came to the door of her house, which was next 
to that of the Fat Gossip, to sweep the scarred and 
broken steps of the porch. She spoke to the Gossips 
casually and proceeded with her work. The appetite of 
46 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
the three women had been whetted by their success with 
Mrs. Lemos; they were eager for more. 

“Hi! Rosie! Did you hear the news?” the Fat 
Woman cried. 

Rosie paused in her sweeping. “News?” she repeated. 

The Fat One laughed. “Yes,” she called back; “Vinti 
is lookin’ for a wife.” 

It was clear from her eyes that Rosie was startled, 
as Mrs. Lemos had been. It took her a full minute to 
adjust her mind to the news; then she said, as if wak¬ 
ing from a dream, “Vinti! A wife! He’ll have an 
awful hard time!” 

“Mrs. Lemos thinks p’raps it won’t be so hard for him 
t’ find one.” 

Rosie turned and watched Mrs. Lemos’ short figure 
trotting down the road. She shook her head and ’ re¬ 
sumed her sweeping. “I pity the woman,” she said. 

Of all the dwellings in the little Portuguese commun¬ 
ity, the most important was the house of Giorgio Vinti. 
There was no architectural fineness about it, no distinc¬ 
tion. It was a small wooden shack of four rooms, bat¬ 
tered and rusty, that stood at the top of a smooth sandy 
beach facing the bay. Its importance lay in the fact that 
it was the abode of the richest and proudest man in the 
place. 

Giorgio was a fisherman. It was rumoured that his 
business amounted to twenty-five thousand dollars in a 
season. Of this amount, his profits were whatever one 
might care to say. His friends estimated the profits high, 
for it added to the prestige of their friendship; his ene- 
47 


& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
mies underestimated his earnings, even to the point of 
suggesting losses. 

Giorgio himself never said how much he made. In 
this, as in everything else, he was aloof, superior, kept 
his own counsel. The uncertainty about his business and 
its interest for the community rather piqued his pride; 
he liked to have the people talking about him. But 
his reputation was most interesting from another angle. 
Vinti was a libertine. For years he had lived in the 
small shack at the top of the beach, and there he had 
always had a housekeeper. The women came and went 
with such frequency that at times the community was 
scandalized. 

As far back as the memory of Vinti went in the settle¬ 
ment, these women had been coming and going. Some 
of them stayed a month, some for years; some had been 
unbelievably good for such a companionship, others so 
gross it had been a wonder that even Vinti could stand 
them about. They all worked for him and kept the 
shabby shack in order, washing, cooking, and doing the 
work of a housekeeper; but there had been no illusion 
about them in the minds of Giorgio’s neighbours. 

During the past month, however, Vinti had been living 
alone. It was an abnormal state for him. He was 
watched by every woman and by most of the men in the 
surrounding grey houses; they wanted to observe him 
in the act of bringing home his next housekeeper. No¬ 
body thought of interfering, but Vinti did all this busi¬ 
ness with such phlegm, with such brazen frankness, that 
his neighbours were alive to view the spectacle of his 
bravado. Though he had never had a mishap of a 
48 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 
notorious nature with any of his visitors, there was 
always the possibility of excitement. But it was a 
phase of Giorgio’s habitual good luck that in any case 
where one of the women was dissatisfied and wouldn’t 
stay, nobody was ever aware of it till she had gone. 
Then rumours sprang up on all sides and the departed 
woman was either censured or pitied, according to the 
whim of the neighbourhood. 

During all the winter now drawing to a close, Vinti 
had had no woman in his shack. Margherita, the last 
—a tall, spare woman with beautiful eyes—had died in 
the house in the autumn. Her memory had been blessed 
by the Gossips with pity and respect, for there had been 
depths of her personality that the people had never 
plumbed and therefore respected—a region of mystery 
and shadowed sorrow. Vinti had buried her with all 
the marks of respect that he would have shown to a 
wife, and turning away from that grave—the only grave 
he had ever made—he had murmured to himself, “No 
more! No more women!” 

Then, as if to spite the interested watchfulness of his 
neighbours, he had taken one of the boys from his 
fishing-fleet to live with him in the shack. They cooked 
and slept and lived together through the long winter, 
lazy and friendly, both apparently satisfied with the 
arrangement. 

There was little work to be done, and early in Jan¬ 
uary both the boy and Vinti became tired of the mo¬ 
notonous inaction. At last they quarrelled—loudly, 
with curses, epithets and recriminations. Giorgio kicked 
the lad out incontinently, and he went over to the main- 
49 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
land, found a job, and was happy. It was in the after¬ 
noon of his first day on the mainland that Joe met him 
in the motion-picture theatre. 

Vinti, left behind, grew more and more miserable. 
For two or three weeks he kept house for himself, eating 
whenever he felt inclined, sleeping much of the time. 
Often, driven by discontent, he would go down to the 
boat-house and pull the traps and dories about, trying 
to find something to do, feeling imaginary premonitions 
of spring. But it was no use. He was very lonely, 
very much bored, disgusted with his life. 

He never visited his neighbours, for in other men’s 
houses he was not master, and where he was not 
master he was not happy. So he remained in his own 
four dirty rooms, watching the sea and listening to the 
wind until he nearly went mad. Then one day he turned 
away from the window where he had been looking out 
on a smother of waves piling up on the beach, and said 
to himself, “By God, I ought t’ get married!” 

The exclamation startled him. For a moment he was 
frightened. The thought had come up out of the 
depths of him; no such thought had ever risen out of 
those depths before. He wondered if he were going crazy 
there alone. Then for many days he mocked that wild 
idea, ridiculed himself and took the notion quite seriously 
by turns. But the idea had taken hold of his mind as 
with many tentacles. Every phase of his dreary existence 
re-echoed, again and again, that wild phrase, “I ought t’ 
get married!” 

At last, in a desperate scramble to save himself, he 
took his pocket-book and went over to the mainland 
to look for a housekeeper. Noting his absence, the 
50 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

Gossips renewed their vigilance and awaited his return. 
At the end of a week he came back—alone. 

He came with a jaded air, for in his heart Giorgio 
knew that he had somehow beaten himself, knew that 
he was done with housekeepers, knew that there was 
no escape from his impending fate, knew that he was 
going to be married. Yet he did not want to be mar¬ 
ried; he could not picture himself as a married man. 
More than anything else in life he valued his inde¬ 
pendence, his freedom, the pride of his untrammelled 
individuality. 

Then he did an unprecedented thing—he sent a per¬ 
emptory message to Mrs. Silvia to come and clean his 
house. 

Mrs. Silvia was a widow who for an indefinite number 
of years had subsisted mainly on life’s negatives and 
had grown frail in consequence. In the summer-time 
she still worked in the fields, gathering fruits and vege¬ 
tables, and some of the farmers still employed her to 
help with the milking in the busy haying-weather. She 
was a faithful worker, according to her ability, but she 
was beaten thin by the hammers of existence, her self- 
reliance and independence were gone. 

When Vinti sent for her she went to his house tremb¬ 
ling under the importance of the rich man’s command. 
And when she beheld the chaotic condition of those four 
rooms she trembled more, not knowing how to begin 
her work. 

“Look at my house, Mrs. Silvia!” Vinti exclaimed. 
“Not fit for pigs! Clean it up, for God’s sake! That 
boy was good for nothin’. Lazy, he was. Throw most 
of the junk out. We can buy more. Make it respec- 
51 


** AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
table, Mrs. Silvia. A man couldn’t bring a wife to a 
place like this.” 

Mrs. Silvia tottered. Her equilibrium was completely 
unstabilized by Giorgio's large order, by the responsi¬ 
bility of the free hand he had given her—“Throw most 
of the junk out,” he had said—and, finally, by his men¬ 
tion of a wife. 

"Are you goin’t' bring a wife here, then?” she gasped, 
at last. 

Giorgio laughed serenely. “I do’ know,” he replied. 
"I’ll have t’ find her first.” 

"That would be easy—for you,” she said, with an 
ingratiating smile. 

Giorgio disliked that smile. "Humph!” he ejaculated. 
"Not so easy! Women that’s fit t’ be wives is scarce, 
Mrs. Silvia. You ought t’ know that, even.” 

The poor woman was properly rebuked; she said no 
more. Day after day she worked in the dirty house, 
piling in heaps the worthless things to be burned or 
thrown into the sea, if Giorgio approved. And Giorgio 
always approved. Finally she finished and reluctantly 
turned her back upon the very good meals of this most 
generous of men. He paid her well and sent her away 
as peremptorily as he had summoned her. 

And, strangely, by that time all the neighbourhood 
knew that Giorgio Vinti was looking for a wife. 

It was news of tremendous import. Nothing quite 
so stirring had ever before upset the little community. 
Friendly women began to observe each other with 
less friendliness. Confidences were curtailed. Mothers 
judged their daughters with a new standard of appraise¬ 
ment. Girls examined their lovers with more critical 
52 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
eyes. Youths watched for any diminution in the warmth 
with which their caresses might be received. Giorgio 
Vinti had set a new value on nearly every inhabitant 
of the Fist. 

Many of the women were filled with new egotism, new 
dreams and hopes and despairs. They examined them¬ 
selves in mirrors and considered their clothes. During 
that week many of them found occasion to take a little 
trip into Melton, to buy a ribbon or a pair of gloves; 
some even went over to the mainland and spent a day 
in the shops. They had all—widow, maid and spinster— 
been passively ready to do their duty as the wife of some 
man, and here was the man most excellent—the man of 
money. Of course Giorgio’s choice was as unpredictable 
as next summer’s weather; but uncertainty is the food 
of hope, and not many women despaired. 

A great strangeness grew up between Giorgio and the 
women. Girls who had heretofore chaffed with him 
without self-consciousness now assumed a new dignity in 
his presence—the reflection of their embarrassed uneasi¬ 
ness at the thought of him. And thereby many of them 
lost the thing they so eagerly desired. For Giorgio's 
was a broad nature. Nothing restrained attracted him. 
Not often in his experience had he found women who 
were too forward for his taste. In the past the grosser 
charms had been his delight; he had always preferred 
buxom creatures who were not afraid to laugh out and 
talk out and call a spade a spade. 


53 


^ VII & 


Through all the excitement of those days—the plans, 
conjectures and chatter—Joe and Angela moved almost 
unaware, absorbed in their winter idyll. 

Angela went about her household duties now dream¬ 
ing less of love in the abstract and thinking more of Joe 
in particular; her first hopes had settled into a sort of 
assurance—a sort of faith—and she sang and was 
beautiful. 

Joe was charmed by her beauty, lost in reverence for 
the mystical depth of spirit within her that was so fine, 
so tender, so appealing to his deepest instincts. This 
quality, completely feminine, seemed individual to her 
alone; its presence placed her in a cloudy region above 
sex, above humanity; it made her wonderful, mysterious; 
because of it her body seemed subtly etherealized. Joe 
hovered about her, physically and mentally, in a sort of 
half-conscious trance, submissive to her wishes, respon¬ 
sive to her moods. Life was opening to him new vistas 
of desire and ambition; he moved in a dreamy phase 
of development that was like a second puberty. 

As often as he could, he hurried across the narrow 
wrist of land and snatched a few minutes with the girl 
under the windy stars. Sometimes during the day she 
would hear him singing in the road as he drove into 
Melton. She would hurry to the window then and they 
54 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 
would exchange smiles and gestures. On Sundays they 
strolled home together from church, and on Sunday 
afternoons they walked out across the marshes or 
found a sheltered spot on one of the beaches, where 
they sat and threw stones at some stick or old tin can 
that Joe would pick out of the drift and set up as a 
target. 

They were completely happy together. Life passed 
them by, clear as a dream, unobstrusive. 

Giorgio Vinti meant almost nothing to either of them. 
He was of no more importance than countless other 
shadowy people casually present about them in the 
world. Angela thought of him as old enough to be her 
father. At the news of his marriage she smiled with a 
distant amused curiosity. 

“D* you hear about Giorgio?” she asked Joe. 

“Vinti?” 

“Yes. He’s goin’ t’ be married.” 

“Oh, sure! I heard the boss talkin’ about it.” 

“What did he say?” 

“Oh, nothin’ much. He don’t like Vinti.” 

“No, some people don’t. But he should worry! He 
can do what he likes.” 

“Yuh. An’ he does, I guess. 01’ man Santos says 
what he likes is bad stuff.” 

“When I was little,” Angela said, “Giorgio used t’ 
give us rides home from school in his fish-cart. He’d 
be cornin’ home from Melton. An’ he often had candy or 
little cakes in his pocket. I used t’ like him.” 

“I don’t like him,” Joe declared. “He’s a bluff an’ 
a bully.” 

“Once, I remember, he gave me some Chinese nuts. 
55 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
They had a funny taste. I liked ’em. I ain’t ever seen 
any since.” 

”1 guess,” Joe said after a pause, “you like him yet.” 

"Yes,” she answered frankly, laughing, “I like him. 
He’s always jolly. But,” she added, taking Joe’s arm, 
"I wouldn't want t* marry him.” 

Joe gave her hand an appreciative pressure. 

“Santos says if Vinti marries he’ll drag his wife down 
t’ hell, or she’ll have t’ save ’em both from the devil.” 

“I bet he’ll be good t’ his wife,” Angela declared. 

Joe made a gesture of unconcern, and they walked 
back to Angela’s house. As they stood in the path, talk¬ 
ing quietly, Angela’s mother came to the door and called 
her in: 

“Angela! You there? Come in here an' get t’ bed!” 

They said good night, and Joe wandered back across 
the wrist, wondering at Mrs. Grania’s sharp manner. 

Rosie Rosario’s first reaction to the news of Vinti’s 
search for a wife was a feeling of contempt—contempt 
for the man himself, who had spent his youth and the 
substance of his manhood wantonly and now expected 
some woman to condone the past and accept with thank¬ 
fulness the remnant of himself that Giorgio offered, with 
his money. Her contempt flashed cold, like a steel blade, 
in thrust after thrust, at the women that she saw about 
her eagerly preparing themselves, agitatedly hoping to be 
chosen as the victim of the old man’s faltering passions. 

It was out of such emotions as this deep contempt that 
thoughts blossomed in the undeveloped intelligence of 
Rosie, and she was now swept by an abstract realization 
of the value of money. She saw vaguely that if one had 
56 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE je 
sufficient money, one could do whatever one pleased— 
could buy anything. In the light of her own poverty, 
this realization of the value of money made Rosie bit¬ 
ter. The more she thought of it—the more she realized 
the complete established power of money—the more bitter 
she felt. And here was Vinti, unfit to marry any decent 
woman, wholly desirable to the women about her because 
he had money. 

Rosie’s mind and emotions were wandering in a new 
realm of facts. She was picking up pieces here and there 
and fitting them into a new pattern of bitterness. Start¬ 
ing with an acceptance of the importance of money 
and an acknowledgment of her hatred of it, she came 
at last to see the importance of money to her personally. 
There she beheld in a flash the pattern of all her thought. 
It was not a pattern of despair, but a pattern of hope— 
the importance, the necessity of money for her. From 
this new basis her mind leaped into the realm of imag¬ 
ined things. With money she could have all that she 
desired—even a chosen husband, as Vinti was to have a 
chosen wife. Her inevitable question: How can I get 
the money? brought only one answer: Vinti’s money! 
And though that at once killed half the beauty of her 
idea, limiting liberty and confining her dream to the realm 
of the actual, it was the only solution that appeared, the 
one chance, the great opportunity. 

Rosie’s emotion had pushed up into her mind, and her 
mind had evolved, a new basic law by which to judge 
the world. Her whole philosophy of life was at once 
shifted on to the foundation of a new thesis—the power 
of money. The great thing was to decide what one 
wanted and, having decided, to go ahead and acquire it 

57 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
One must, of course, pay something. Success, she per¬ 
ceived in a sudden inspiration, lay in clever bargaining 
with Fate. First one must get as much money as one 
could, giving as little for it as possible; then one must 
pay as little money as possible for everything else one 
wanted. It was a clear code. Its difficulty lay in find¬ 
ing opportunities to bargain—especially for the money: 

But here at her hand was an opportunity waiting— 
Giorgio Vinti wanted a wife. Fate had come offering 
to bargain with Rosie. Her mind leaped; she would be 
the woman chosen. 

She sat long that night and dreamed in her cold bed¬ 
room, where the roof slanted down and cut out a great 
segment of the squareness. Gone, for the present, was 
the black reality about her; she was lost in contempla¬ 
tion of the splendid things she would do when she should 
have Vintfs money at her back. At last she went to 
bed with chattering teeth, but serene in spirit, for the plan 
of her achievement was complete. She would propose for 
Vintfs money deliberately. She knew the man; he would 
appreciate frank dealing, and she would be frank. 

She had seen that she must be different from the other 
women. She was no child. She would go to Vinti as 
a woman of the world and propose an arrangement that 
could be as clearly stated as any business proposition. 
And even though, in coming to an agreement, they might 
have difficulty over the actual terms, Giorgio could not 
fail to appreciate—even admire, perhaps—the manner of 
her approach. 

On the following Sunday morning all the women at the 
Fist waited nervously for the wintry roll of Father Pas- 
58 


■* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
quale’s bell. It came sounding at last, mildly summon¬ 
ing in itself, but stirring the nerves of the women like the 
last call to a star in a play that her cue has sounded 
and she must go on. And the women, like actresses, cos¬ 
tumed and made up, moved out into the cold, dreary set, 
with the sea for back-drop and the Fist towering into 
the flies, and performed, each according to her inspira¬ 
tion, before Giorgo Vinti and the invisible gods. 

Every woman had to pass Giorgio’s house to get to 
the chapel. He stood at the window of his shack at the 
top of the beach, as in a reviewing-stand, and saw them 
pass—the faith and flower of the settlement. As they 
moved before his critical eyes he was scintillant with emo¬ 
tions, flashing and darkening like a summer sea. There 
were those over whom his eyes shone with appreciation 
or desire; there were others over whom he shook his 
head and was serious; at some he laughed outright in 
huge mockery; and at some he sneered in the manner of a 
superior. Some women waked no visible response in him 
at all. Once he laughed gaily and waved his hand. 

When he had finished the review, which amounted to an 
inspection, he went and sat down with a sigh. Not one 
of the women he had seen had waked in him anything 
more substantial than a faint desire; and Giorgio knew 
that it would be folly to plan his married life on a basis 
of desire—it was sure to crumble and disappear. 

Ah, he didn’t want any of them, anyway. He didn’t 
want to be married. No! 

In the churchyard the Gossips had their own reviewing- 
stand from which they saw and noted each woman’s badge 
of hope come fluttering on the wind. It was a pageant of 
59 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
personalities visibly symbolized. Mary Ramos had new 
white gloves and new tan shoes. The older Furtado girl 
had acquired a new dark coat—green and very satisfy¬ 
ing. Her sister displayed a new bright orange scarf that 
served to half hide her old coat. The Lemos girl—Mrs. 
Lemos’ unmarried daughter—had had her hat gaily re¬ 
trimmed. Mrs. Vargas, the widow, left her jacket open 
at the throat to display her new pink silk waist. The 
Papentello woman, whose past was a mystery, had pur¬ 
chased a brand-new dress, red and hot-looking, made with 
the shortest skirt that had ever appeared on the Fist. 
Others had new silk stockings, little bands of lace, bows 
and ornaments that mean so much to the costume-sense of 
women and nothing at all to men. Mrs. Souza wore a 
new blue hat trimmed with gay pink flowers, worried by 
the wind. Angela and Rosie came together into the 
churchyard. Neither of them wore a visible stitch of 
new clothes. As usual, Angela had on spotless white cot¬ 
ton gloves, her good brown coat and the hat with the 
green feather; Rosie’s tan gloves were familiar to every¬ 
one, as her dark coat and her hat with the big bow of 
ribbon were familiar. 

At sight of these two the Gossips exclaimed. 

“Ah!” said the Fat One, non-committally. 

“Oh!” said the Washed-out Widow, disappointed. 

“Ah ha!” said the Thin One, in admiration of their 
cleverness and daring. 

Then they all went in to mass. 

Never had there been a more devout gathering of 
worshippers in the little chapel than on that Sunday 
morning. Father Pasquale, the good, innocent man, was 
touched and uplifted by the presence of so many of his 
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£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

people and by the devotion with which they assisted at 
the service. 

He had not yet heard of Vinti’s quest. 

Giorgio himself was not at the service. He never went 
to church—that was one of the things Father Pasquale 
charged to his soul as a failure. Yet they were friends 
—the priest and Giorgio—and the gruff fisherman was 
generous with his money for Father Pasquale’s work. 

It was ironic that Giorgio should be the cause of 
spiritually exalting the good priest; nevertheless it was he 
who had caused this splendid congregation to assemble in 
such humbleness of spirit. Every marriageable woman 
present had a fervent petition to offer that morning—a 
prayer in which she abased herself before the Most High 
and poured out her heart to the Blessed Virgin, repenting 
of past sins and promising future virtue in consideration 
for the present help of Heaven. Each woman’s adherents 
—mother, aunts, incompetent sisters—prayed for her too. 
In their bid for a great and notorious success these women 
were enlisting, for themselves and for their candidates, all 
the strength they could get at, and the help of Heaven was 
not to be neglected. 

Rosie sat at the end of a pew. As she looked about her 
during the service and noted the pitiful pains the other 
women had taken to fix themselves up for Giorgio’s 
inspection, a light of triumph glowed in her eyes. She 
saw that they were all amateurs, provincial, unimagina¬ 
tive. She’d show these ninnies! Her scheme would work! 
The triumphant sense of her own clear vision grew till at 
last, when she sang the simple hymn to the Virgin, there 
rang in her voice a new resonance—the clear brave note 
of confidence. 


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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

There was but one supremely happy girl in all that 
windy waste—Angela. There was but one deeply happy 
lad—Joe. Their love-affair was passing from the stage 
of heart-interest to the stage of head-interest. Their first 
palpitations and excitements were over; they understood 
each other in a sort of vague intimacy; they had begun 
to plan the future. 

Like all the other women, Angela had dressed in the 
best clothes she could find in her meagre wardrobe; but 
she had not dressed for Vinti. Joe waited for her, his 
eyes fixed upon the chapel door. When she came out she 
greeted him with a smile, and together they walked away, 
down the windy path. On the way Angela’s mother 
passed them in the midst of a group of voluble matrons— 
spectators of the comedy; and so engrossed was the shrill, 
thin woman, she passed her daughter without seeing her. 
Later, however, as Joe and Angela stood before the house, 
the girl was summoned by her mother’s querulous voice. 

“Angela!” she called harshly. “Come in here an’ help 
get the dinner, an’ don’t stand there all day, talkin’ like 
a fool.” 

Angela looked at Joe. 

“What makes her so cross?” he asked. 

“I do’ know,” Angela said. “I guess maybe she don’t 
feel good. She ain’t very well.” 

“She don’t like me,” Joe suggested. 

“She don’t know you.” Angela smiled. “I got t’ go.” 

They arranged for a walk together in the afternoon, 
z^nd Angela left him; Joe turned homeward, wondering 
how he could ever stand the sharp tongue of his mother- 
in-law-elect. 


62 


* VIII * 


That Sunday was not a day of peace for Rosie. Hour 
after hour she went about her work in a fever of agita¬ 
tion; hopes and hesitations contended for dominion over 
her soul. At times she was overwhelmed by the risks 
of her venture; she was aware that in going to Vinti, as 
she planned, she was putting herself into his hands— 
chancing everything; and she knew, too, that if he found 
her proposal not to his liking, he would unhesitatingly 
shame her before the community. Yet her mind was 
obsessed by the plan she had conceived. Actually she was 
not afraid of shame—she had chanced it before without 
disaster. She came to hold the conviction of success to 
her bosom, both to create and to still the agitation that 
moved there in great waves and stopped her breath, as 
the waves on a summer beach roll up, smothering the 
happy bather and filling him with delight. 

Darkness came early; though the days were lengthening, 
the evenings were long. Rosie grew weary of looking 
at the clock. But at last the supper was over, the dishes 
were washed. She stole off to her room. Then she stole 
quietly back again and went out into the windy darkness. 

The night was dreary—an immense maelstrom of un¬ 
happiness, an inferno of unrest. Through the infinite, 
bleak spaces rose and echoed the sighs and sobs, the faint 
cries, the movements of an intense sorrow. 

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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

Rosie felt suddenly weary. She had a still sense of 
uselessness in her undertaking. Where was she going? 
What was it all for? What was it all worth? Then 
Giorgio’s lighted window caught her eyes, and she seemed 
to rouse from a queer dream. That light was the answer 
to the foolish exclamations of her mind. Her senses 
cleared, her being became vital, she was sensitive to her 
finger-tips. The menace of the night withdrew before 
the keen thrust of her revived ambition. She was strong 
and filled with assurance. Her lips curled in a faint 
smile. 

For a moment, as she passed around the corner of 
Vinti’s shack, she stood in a pool of stillness. She seemed 
to have escaped from a turmoil into a calmness that 
unaccountably seemed safe. She raised her hand and 
straightened her hat, and then, with an automatic tensing 
of her body, she turned the corner of the shanty, plunged 
again into the windy sea of the night, and knocked at 
Giorgio Vinti’s door. 

She heard his responsive gruff call—“Come in!”— 
more like a challenge than an invitation. She pressed 
against the door, holding it close against her body, and 
entered. 

The lamp flared in the gust she admitted, and she saw 
Vinti half rise out of his chair at sight of her. Great 
shadows were darting crazily on the wall behind him; for 
a moment her eyes were blinded by the wavering of the 
lamp-flame and by the tobacco-smoke that swirled like 
fog in the dingy room. She got her focus directly, how¬ 
ever, and stood with her back to the door, looking at 
Vinti with flashing dark eyes. Through the smoke he 
gazed back at her non-committally with keen grey eyes, 
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£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE & 
and waited. He was sturdily built, broad and stocky. 
He sat at ease in a deep chair, unshaved, his grizzled hair 
in disorder, collarless, and with his shirt open at the 
neck, exposing his thick bull-throat. He appeared older 
than his years; he looked unclean and uncouth. Seeing 
him thus, one would have marvelled at this girl’s choice 
of a husband. 

''Well!” Rosie said at last. She said it with an accent 
of finality, as one says it who has just returned from a 
journey. 

Giorgio seemed to accept her coming casually. "Hello, 
Rosie,” he said. Then, after a moment, "Sit down.” 

She moved across the room and sat down by the 
cluttered table. "It’s awful windy,” she stated. 

"Windy! I get it all down here. Seems’s if it’d blow 
the shack away sometimes.” 

Neither of them smiled. Rosie scarcely heard him; 
her mind was busy with her undertaking. Giorgio was 
really weary and, moreover, he didn’t know how to pro¬ 
ceed. He was waiting for Rosie to say what she had 
come for. A dozen notions of what that might be flashed 
through his mind, and underlying them all was a clear 
curiosity to know just what it was. Women did not often 
come to visit him. 

At last Rosie looked up into his eyes, her own eyes 
bright, and a smile curved on her lips as she said, "I hear 
news of you, Giorgio.” 

"Me?” 

"Yes. Is it true, what they’re sayin’?” 

"I do’ know,” he said, shrugging. "Prob’ly not. 
Most often it ain’t.” 

"But this time? No?” 


65 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

“Well . . .” He seemed to be considering. 

“Don’t you know if it’s true?” she pressed, laughing. 

“How can I tell? I don't even know what it is.” 

Rosie had a moment’s wild fear. Perhaps what they 
were saying wasn’t true. But she answered calmly, 
“They say you’re lookin’ f’r a wife.” 

“A wife, eh!” Giorgio chuckled to himself as if 
hugely amused, yet with an air of abstraction. “I don’t 
have t’ get married, Rosie, my girl.” 

“No. Most men don’t, I guess.” 

“No. Most men don’t have to.” 

“But they get married all the same.” 

“Fools!” he said. “It’s the women’s fault.” 

“The women’s fault! It ain’t a fault.” 

“It’s worse’n a fault, it’s foolishness; an’ the women 
manage it.” 

He sat a bit higher in his chair and shifted his pipe. 

“Now you’re more sensible,” he said. “You go alone.” 

“Yes,” she agreed, “an’ I find it slow goin’.” 

“Bah! Nonsense! You c’n travel faster alone—fas¬ 
ter an’ farther.” 

“It’s no good, though, no matter how far you go. I’m 
tired of it, an’ the farther I go, the tireder I get.” 

Giorgio raised his eyebrows. “No good? Don’t you 
believe it! You know better. Alone you don’t need t’ 
miss a thing—an’ you don’t need t’ be always alone. 
Hitched, you’re hitched, an’ you’ve got t’ miss a lot. 
Don’t you go thinkin’ o’ gettin’ married, Rosie.” 

“It’s time t’ think of it,” she declared. 

“It’s never time.” 

“It’s time for me t’ do it, too.” 

Giorgio shrugged. “Well, it’s up t’ you,” he said. 

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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

"It’s time for you, too/’ she retorted. 

He gave her a keen glance. “P'raps,” he said. “But 
I’d have t' think of it a long time first. Who're you 
goin’t’ marry, Rosie?” 

“That's what I come t' talk t' you about.” 

“Yes?” 

“Yes. Is it true that you're lookin’ for a wife?” 

Giorgio understood her. He studied her closely through 
the tobacco-smoke. Then he said gruffly, “What ails you, 
girl? Get that notion out o' your head as quick as you 
can. What would I do with a wife, in God’s name? 
Life’s too short an’ the world’s too wide for a man t’ tie 
himself to a post. If I’d been the marryin’ kind I’d ha’ 
found my woman long ago. As for me an’ you, Rosie, 
we’d be cuttin' each other's throats before the clock struck. 
I'm no saint, my girl!” 

“I know. But women don’t want t’ marry saints.” 

“Funny! Men do,” he said meaningly. 

“Listen,” Rosie insisted. “I want a husband, an’ I 
want one that amounts t’ somethin'. You want a wife, 
an’ you need more’n a pretty face. I’ve got brains an’ I 
can work . . .” 

He held up his hand, interrupting her. “I don’t need 
more brains in this house,” he said. “I got brains 
enough; an’ I can do the work, too. You don’t know how 
much a lonely man thinks of a pretty young face, Rosie. 
Men want t’ marry saints, as I said, but they like the 
pretty faces too. They like the pretty faces at home, an' 
they like ’em away from home. Men can’t work all the 
time—they like t’ play too. They can’t help that; it’s in 
’em t’ play. Eh, Rosie?” 

On Giorgio’s face there glimmered the grimace of a 

67 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
satyr. He laid his pipe on the table and pulled himself 
into a more shapely attitude. He was warming to a new 
idea. 

“What I need ain’t a wife, but a housekeeper. What 
you need ain’t a husband, Rosie, but a friend. What we 
both want is a friend, an’ not a master.” 

Rosie understood with a flush that she was being re¬ 
jected as an applicant for the post of Vinti’s wife, but 
was being offered a position in his house on quite another 
plane. 

“That’s all right, Giorgio,” she said; “you know where 
t’ find your housekeepers an’ friends, I guess. I thought 
you were goin’ t’ settle down into decency an’ save your 
old age from shame. I ought to of known better.” 

“There, there, my girl! Don’t you go off an’ get hot. 
I ain’t a beggar. I expect t’ pay. Sit still an’ let’s get 
to the bottom o’ this. An’ don’t talk so much about my 
old age. I ain’t old! No, by God! Not yet!” he cried 
out, slapping his heavy thigh. “Let’s look at this as a 
money matter,” he proposed. 

Rosie’s head rang with the jumbled crowding of all 
her recent thoughts about money; but she now realized 
that in this attempt her theories were proving imprac¬ 
tical. She shook her head and stood up. “Your money 
matters don’t interest me,” she said. 

“No?” he asked cynically. “You won’t listen, then?” 

Rosie made no answer, but went toward the door. 

“Wait!” His voice was heavy with the pressure of 
emotion he had brought upon himself. “You came here 
to-night like a bold thing. You took a chance when you 
came, an’ now you’ve got t’ pay. There’s a quiet way 
that’ll mean money in your stockin,’ or there’s the other 
68 


\* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
way—tomorrah they’ll be talkin’ about you out there. 
What they say may be true, or may not; but, either way, 
you’ll have t’ take it. You can save yourself an’ have 
somethin’ t’ buy a trinket with besides, if you’ll listen 
t’ reason; but you’ll have t’ make your choice, now 
you’re here.” 

Giorgio’s eyes flamed with dots of hot light as he looked 
at her. Rosie’s eyes were flaming too—flaming cold. 

She laughed shortly. “D’you suppose I came without 
thinkin’ what you might do, Giorgio?” 

He let out a great burst of laughter. “By God!” he 
cried, “you’ve got the stuff in you. Why don’t you 
be reasonable?” 

They regarded each other in silence, measuring each 
other deeper than words could go. 

“You’ve got the stuff in you,” he repeated at last, 
“but it’s not the stuff I want in a wife, ye see!” 

“What stuff do you want in a wife, then?” she asked. 

“Well, there’s the pretty face—the young an’ pretty 
face, an’ there’s the saint, as I said. But look, Rosie,” 
he pronounced seriously, “I don’t want any woman for a 
wife that’d marry me just for my money.” 

“So? Use your sense, Giorgio! Where’s the woman 
that’s goin’ t’ marry you for anything else? Listen: I 
come t’ give everything I had for everything that bein’ 
your wife’d bring me; but if I can’t get it all, I don’t 
want any of it. I’d like t’ have my hands on your 
money, all right; an’ if I could get my hands on your 
money I’d pay what it might cost me. But don’t you 
make any mistake about me or any other woman— 
whoever you get for a wife’ll have her eyes on your 
money an’ not on you. No, she’ll have t’ shut her eyes 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
t’ you, Giorgio. You’re old. The best part o’ you is 
in the bank. If it wasn’t for your money no woman’d 
look at you; an’ you know it.” 

She turned and went out, admitting a great wind that 
seemed like the blast of her indignation. Vinti stood 
gazing after her, amazed at her boldness, furious at what 
she had said. 

Out in the night Rosie was convulsed with a horror 
of existence. Her recent ambition seemed ridiculous, 
her recent hope absurd. Self-confidence and courage 
crumpled, and she was suddenly face to face with the 
chimera of the future—the stark emptiness of years that 
stretched away in every direction, endless but for the 
sharp horizon of a gaunt encircling fear. 

The wind dragged at her clothes as if to drag her 
down. In her ears was the moan of the night. She 
could feel tears running down her cheeks; she was filled 
with self-pity. Her failure with Giorgio was proof of 
her insignificance. She had been a fool to chance that 
encounter; she ought to have known. She realized at 
once that she had known. All her arguments about 
money, her grand theory of paying for what one wanted, 
were like the imaginings of a child. 

At last she halted in weariness of spirit and sank 
down on the beach, shaken with sobs, trembling as with 
cold. She clasped her face in her hands; the bitter tears 
of defeat fell between her fingers and were drunk by the 
sands that drank so much bitterness from the sea. Life 
for her was a lost cause, destined to failure from her 
birth through its own inherent deficiencies. Her mind 
went back over the past—the past empty of all but work, 
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j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
small hatreds and small passions. Even her affairs of 
love, the moments in which she had been most conscious 
of power, seemed to her now like barbaric skirmishes 
leading to this final defeat—ill-planned moves in a paltry- 
life. 

She rose at last. Before her spread an immense som¬ 
breness of time; about her hung the infinite, pitiless 
universe. Tears no longer ran down her cheeks, but 
her body was shaken by sobs. The sand had been whip¬ 
ping into her hair and face and clothes. She was very 
weary, worn out, empty. But the bitterness of her tears 
had entered into her heart, tainted her blood; she turned 
homeward through the darkness of the night and the 
darkness of the years, with that new sharp bitterness in 
her soul. 


71 


<£ IX <£ 


Rosie's visit roused Vinti as from a dream. Like a 
hibernating bear, he had been idle all winter in his 
shack. He was a man of few needs and those needs had 
been satisfied. The affairs of the world and of his neigh¬ 
bours had not interested him. The forces in him that 
made him a sensualist had been sleeping. 

As Rosie left him he leaped to his feet; he stood in 
the middle of the floor for a minute while his passions 
cooled and his thoughts cleared. Then he went over and 
looked at himself in the bit of cracked mirror that he 
kept, but seldom used. The creature that he saw glaring 
back at him filled him with a strange awe. “What you 
been doin’ ?” he said to the reflection before him. “What 
ails you?” 

What had he been doing? What did it mean—this 
long inaction? Was he losing his grip? Was he grow¬ 
ing old? Ha! No! He knew that he was still all 
there! His body was sound and, subtly rising within 
him, he could feel the old passionate desires swaying, 
surging, sweeping through him as the great spring-tides 
swept up against the cliff out there, grinding at the 
strong foundations of his being, shaping his life, carving 
his destiny. 

He slapped his heavy thighs and pounded his swelling 
chest to reassure himself; stretched in all directions, ris- 
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J* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
ing on his toes, reaching, flinging out his arms, feeling 
the blood run free in sluggish channels. 

This talk of marriage had made him restless. 

He dropped into a chair and sat a long time thinking. 
He thought of the past—the work he had done, the money 
he had made, the women he had known—and though 
there were one or two of the women he wouldn’t mind 
seeing again, his whole existence appeared, as he looked 
at it, like a waste. He had no one of his blood any¬ 
where in the world to turn to; he suddenly felt lonely, 
weary. Something whispered in him, asking for a sym¬ 
pathy that it dimly sensed the existence of but had never 
known. He grew quiet as he sat thinking. The passion 
and anger that Rosie had roused subsided. His mind 
stared, at last, at the fact of his ultimate extinction, and 
there stirred in him a repulsion, a kind of nausea, at 
the sensed obliteration of his ego. Something strong in his 
nature went tense to combat it. 

Giorgio realized, in the vague manner of all men, that 
Nature must conquer him at last. He was only forty-six, 
yet he had not spared himself in those forty-six years. 
Fifty was approaching, and he thought of the age of 
fifty as a kind of barrier thrown across his days; life 
would then no longer be making him bright promises, 
but would begin to ask for his accounting, begin to take 
toll of his talents. 

At last—finally, irrevocably—he made up his mind to 
be married. That was the only way in which he could 
save his life, his name, his memory, from oblivion. Yes, 
he would be married before it was too late. He turned 
deliberately to the matter of choosing a wife, and he un¬ 
consciously visualized the advent of a family—the strong 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
sons who were to perpetuate his name, the strength and 
pride it stood for. 

He saw again the women of the community on their 
way to chapel that morning, passed them all in review 
before his mind and scrutinized them with the eyes of 
a connoisseur. He settled back in his chair; faint bodily 
stirrings, grunts, and grimaces of derision marked them 
as they passed. His strong instinct cried out for youth 
and beauty in the mate to be chosen, and he dismissed 
the women, one by one, until only Angela was left— 
young, strong and lovely. She was the only one of them 
all who would be worth what he would be worth to a 
wife, the only one of them all who had that morning 
waved a friendly, unconstrained hand to him as he stood 
looking out at his window. He had noted then the fire 
of her eyes, the colour of her skin, and the beautiful free 
movements of her body as the wind wrapped her gar¬ 
ments close about her. 

At last Giorgio rose to his feet, full of vigour, his mind 
made up. He crossed the room, slipped into his short, 
leather-lined jacket, put on his black felt hat, and taking 
his stick, the symbol of his importance, he blew out the 
light, locked the shack, and started along the beach. 

He had not felt so light, physically and mentally, 
since the autumn. Out under the stars he pulled himself 
together, and when he reached the empty road he strode 
with an air of confidence. He thought of Rosie, and he 
paused, his stick held in mid-air, arrested in the arc of its 
swing. He chuckled to himself, softly, disdainfully, as 
at a mild joke; then he continued on his way. He’d 
show Rosie the kind of wife he wanted—he’d show them 
all! As he approached the Grania house, he paused 
74 


\* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
again for a moment. Then he went on to the door and 
knocked with his stick. 

He could hear the voices within die out at his rapping. 
There was a sudden silence, broken by the scraping of 
a chair, and then the door was opened. Giorgio felt the 
lamplight in his eyes and the breath of warm air on his 
face; then Grania was saying, a trifle awkwardly, “What? 
Giorgio? Come in! Come in!” 

When Mrs. Grania heard that rapping from the out¬ 
side, her heart stood still. But at the sound of Vinti’s 
voice it leaped into action again, racing madly in an 
ecstasy of gratification and joy. With a swift effort of 
will Mrs. Grania controlled her body—controlled the 
gleam in her eyes, her swift breathing, her nervous hands, 
her shaking voice. She rose from her chair and cried 
out, “Ah! Giorgio! What brings you? Are you sick, 
maybe?” She laughed as she spoke, and set a chair for 
the great man. 

“No,” he said emphatically. “I’m never sick.” 

He stood his stick in the corner, took off his coat and 
hat, and hung them on a hook behind the door—as if 
it had been his own customary hook—and sat down. 
Mrs. Grania went to fetch some wine, leaving her hus¬ 
band to entertain the guest. 

No door hung between the kitchen and the hall that ran 
directly out of it to the front of the house. At the 
kitchen-end the hall was very narrow, but about twelve 
feet along there was an angle in the left-hand wall, two 
feet deep, and from that point on to the front of the 
house the hall was more amply dimensioned. In this 
angle of the hall Mr. Grania had built a high cupboard 
75 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
full of shelves, and there Mrs. Grania kept her bottled 
wine. 

The thin, nervous woman now went along the hall, 
without a light, and opened the door of this cupboard. 
There her strength left her—seemed to flow out of her 
body and leave her limp. She leaned against the cup¬ 
board and let her heart finish its racing. Her shallow 
bosom heaved; her body trembled. If she had relaxed 
the least bit further, she would have fallen to the floor 
in a faint. But she held herself from that with her 
hand pressed against her heart, and gradually her body 
subsided to normal. Giorgio’s visit seemed to have waked 
every weakness in her. 

When Mrs. Grania first heard the news of Vinti’s 
search for a wife, she had shrugged her shoulders and 
said, “He’ll want an orphan. Giorgio’s too wise t’ 
marry a mother-in-law.” But as soon as the interest of 
her neighbours had been transferred to another speaker, 
she had cast a swift, appraising glance at Angela, and 
smiled quietly to herself. 

The news had struck into her intelligence, waking 
ambitions there that she had never dreamed of before. 
She saw clearly that Angela was the most attractive 
creature on the Fist for the capturing of Vinti and all 
he stood for. During the following days, as the excite¬ 
ment of other mothers and other girls grew, she and 
Angela remained calm. A kind of vanity began to stir 
in Mrs. Grania—the vanity of a mother-in-law whose 
daughter has married well. She became aware of it and 
smothered it, knowing that one could not foretell what 
Giorgio might do, and determined to save herself from 
being ridiculous. She knew, too, that nothing she could 
76 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
do would make Angela more eligible than she already 
was. So she did nothing, but watched the other women 
working, enjoyed their rivalries with equanimity, and 
waited. 

To-night the rapping had come suddenly at the door. 
She knew immediately, intuitively, who it was and what 
he had come for. It was as if the heavy stick had 
pounded on her heart. The excitement that the other 
women had created for themselves day by day during 
the past week now descended upon Mrs. Grania like an 
avalanche out of the winter night, crushing her, smother¬ 
ing her, almost killing her. 

She stood leaning against the cupboard, and as her 
quivering body grew calm her mind surveyed the future. 
She knew that Vinti was strong, knew that he could 
manage people’s lives with his money. She had no in¬ 
tention of selling out to him, but she was ready to bar¬ 
gain for a great gain. If he wanted Angela, he must 
pay; if he wouldn’t pay enough, he had better not have 
her, for that would mean that he did not want her 
enough for her happiness. 

Mrs. Grania knew a great deal about the marriage 
relation. She knew what men in love were like, and she 
knew what they were like when love had faded as the 
principal motivation of their lives. She determined that 
there must be substance and permanence for Angela as 
a wife. If the girl could get love in the bargain too, 
she would be that much luckier; but Mrs. Grania did not 
see love as necessary—certainly other things were more 
important. 

At last she stirred. She took two bottles of wine from 
the cupboard, closed it, went along the hall to the room 
77 


jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
where Angela was sleeping and closed the door very 
quietly; then she returned to the kitchen with an amiable 
smile on her lips. 

“Ah!” Giorgio exclaimed at sight of the dusty bottles. 

Mrs. Grania placed one of the bottles at the back of 
the stove, that a slow warming might increase the smooth 
fluidity of its contents. Her husband rose and drew the 
cork from the other. Mrs. Grania poured the wine into 
clean tumblers and passed it around. 

“Long life to all!” said Grania, raising his glass. 

“An’ success!” Giorgio added. 

“An’ happiness!” said Mrs. Grania. 

They all drank and settled back comfortably in their 
chairs. For a time the talk was all of the quality of last 
year’s grapes, who made the best wine at the Fist, the 
open winter, and the prospects of spring. 

“How long you been at the Fist?” Giorgio asked at 
last. 

“Mos’ twenty years,” Grania said. 

“Time goes!” Giorgio remarked philosophically. “We 
get old an’ children grow up.” 

“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs. Grania. “Not long ago I was 
young, like Angela. Now . . .” She shrugged. 

Giorgio nodded. “Where’s Angela?” he asked. 

“In bed,” said Mrs. Grania. 

“She • marry an’ leave you pretty soon, eh?” he 
suggested. 

Mrs. Grania threw out her chin with a toss of her head, 
suggesting that it was too remote for consideration. 
“She’s young,” she said. “Folks don’t marry so young 
like they did.” 


78 


jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE Jt 

Giorgio laughed out. “No," he said genially. “I'm 
jus’ gettin’ ready t' marry myself.” 

Mrs. Grania nodded. “I heard the talk. Is it true, 
then?” 

“I do’ know,” Giorgio replied. “I’m afraid o’ women.” 

The two men laughed at the jest, but Mrs. Grania 
maintained her reserve. 

“You ain’t found a wife yet?” Grania asked. “There’s 
plenty o’ women here at the Fist . . .” 

Mrs. Grania shot a keen glance at her husband. 
“Pah!” she interrupted him. “There’s no woman at the 
Fist for Giorgio!” 

Vinti looked at her fixedly over his wine-glass. 

“How old is Angela?” he asked quietly, still looking 
at the little woman. 

“Angela? ’Most nineteen. She’s a good girl.” 

Mrs. Grania made her statement quietly and looked 
at Giorgio without aggressiveness, calm and sure of her¬ 
self. They understood each other. They had already 
entered into an intimacy that left Mr. Grania out—a 
sort of tentative mother- and son-in-law relation. 
They had come to the point of engaging for the mastery 
of the future. 

“Yes,” Giorgio said calmly, after a pause. “She’s a 
good girl, an’ she deserves a good husband.” 

Mrs. Grania shrugged. “A husband is a husband,” 
she remarked, “but only girls like Angela are 
good.” 

Vinti smiled. “Even some husbands are better’n 
others,” he said. 

“Yes. Some are better because some are so bad.” 

79 


jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 

Giorgio smiled again complacently. “Well, me, now! 
I’m thinkin’ o' marryin’. What kind of a husband d’you 
think Lll make, Mrs. Grama?” 

“You! Well, who knows? You can’t tell about a hus¬ 
band till you see him married, like you can’t tell about a 
farmer till you see him workin’ his crops. It depen’s 
on the woman too. Who you goin’t’ marry?” 

Giorgio laughed softly. “I do’ know,” he said, “but I 
don’t want any ol’ woman in my house.” 

“No. You ain’t old enough t’ want an ol’ wife.” 

“I need life in my house, Mrs. Grania, an’ I want a 
fam’ly by an’ by.” 

“Sure. It is wise, Giorgio; an’ I wish you luck.” 

“A girl like Angela, now; she wouldn’t want t’ marry 
an ol’ fellah like me, eh?” 

“Angela? Well! Why not?” 

“Oh, she’ll be thinkin’ of a young husband.” 

“Angela’s a good girl!” Mrs. Grania said with deter¬ 
mination. “She don’t think o’ fellahs at all.” 

Giorgio shook his head. “I know,” he remarked. 
“Sometimes I see her with a young fellah.” 

“Yes? Well, what would you have? A girl mus’ play 
sometimes!” 

“Sure,” said Giorgio; “if it’s on’y play.” 

“When the time comes,” Mrs. Grania declared, “I can 
tell Angela all about men an’ marryin’, an’ she’ll listen 
t’ me. I been a good mother t’ Angela.” 

Giorgio nodded, and for a minute there was silence. 

“Speak to her, then, Mrs. Grania,” he said at last. 
“See what she thinks o’ me for a husband.” 

“You want t’ marry my Angela, Giorgio?” Mrs. 

80 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

Grania looked steadily at him; Mr. Grania turned his 
head and looked at him too. 

“Yes/’ Vinti said, looking from one to the other. "I 
need her in my house.” 

Mrs. Grania nodded, and again there was silence in 
the room. Mr. Grania, his legs stretched out before him, 
returned his gaze to his boots. Then Mrs. Grania spoke. 

'Til speak t’ Angela, Giorgio; but if you need her in 
your house, you need a new house t’ put her in, too.” 

“What for?” he asked. 

“What for?” she repeated. “You got t’ give a girl 
somethin’ besides a ring.” 

“I’ll give her a name,” he said significantly. 

“Any man she meets can give her a name, Giorgio.” 
“But names don’t all mean the same,” he suggested. 

“No. But look! Don’t be afraid, Giorgio—I don’t 
ever expect t’ live anywheres but here in this house. 
A house means a lot to a woman. Yours ain’t even as 
good as this one. Don’t expect too much. Angela’s 
young, an’ she’ll give you all she’s got—an’ that’s what 
you want. You’re rich. Well, then, spend some o’ your 
money now.” 

“Yes,” Giorgio said, “I got some money. When I 
marry, the woman comes to all I got. It’s mine an’ she 
gets what a woman needs. That’s how.” 

“It’s yours jus’ the same if it’s in a decent house an’ 
she has it too. Angela can get a better house than this 
some day, Giorgio.” 

“That’s so,” he agreed. “For Angela it would be easy. 
Well, look then. I been thinkin’ t’ make a new start 
every way with this marriage business. If the girl wants 
81 


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a new house she can have it. I ain’t stingy. But a 
house takes time, an’ I can’t wait all year.” 

‘TILtell her about the new house, Giorgio. She could 
live in your house on the beach in the summer, if the 
new house is done in the fall.” 

“Well . . .” he considered. “Tell her if she wants a 
house we can start it as soon’s the frost’s out o’ the 
ground.” 

“I’ll talk t’ her to-morrah,” Mrs. Grania agreed. 

They opened the second bottle of wine. 

“Here’s t’ your success!” Giorgio said, looking at Mrs. 
Grania. 

“An’ t’ your good luck!” she replied. 

Angela’s father drank in silence. 

Giorgio swung into his jacket, pulled his felt hat tight 
on his head, took his stick from the corner, and bade the 
Granias good night. 

When he had gone Angela’s father and mother stood 
looking at each other in silence. 

“Well—no?” Mrs. Grania said at last. Her husband 
said nothing, but nodded. 

She washed the glasses wearily and in silence, and 
they went in to bed in the large room off the kitchen. 

Out in the road Giorgio threw back his shoulders and 
chuckled to himself. The old woman had been shrewd. 
He felt confident that she would be able to handle 
Angela. So, it was well. But a new house! That was 
something! Yet he was pleased about the new house; 
he had not thought of it before, but now it appealed to 
him. He would make it a good house—the best at the 
Fist. It should be the crown of his pride. It would give 
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distinction to his marriage and to his wife. It would 
make the other women envious. He chuckled again. 

He wanted to whistle, wanted to sing as he went along. 
The hovering darkness was not in keeping with his mood; 
he was in a spring mood. All the weeks of hesitation 
and thinking were over. Now he had only to handle the 
future, and he felt confident about the future. 

He stood in front of his shack, looking out across the 
bay. At the foot of the beach the waves were lapping 
in lazily. Overhead the stars gleamed in mazes, in¬ 
finitely splendid. He was alone in the night. It was 
good to be alone like this in the presence of a new future 
—strange and pleasant. . . . 


83 


& X & 


After breakfast the next morning Mrs. Grania said to 
Angela, “Hurry, now, an’ clear up there. I want t’ do 
some cookin’.” 

Angela cleared the table and began to wash the dishes 
at the sink. All her motions were graceful and lovely. 
As she worked, her strong young body seemed light, 
and her eyes were clear with looking out to far horizons. 

“Did we wake you up las’ night with our talk?” Mrs. 
Grania asked at last. 

“No. I didn’t hear anything.” 

“Giorgio Vinti was here.” 

“Giorgio? What did he want?” 

“Oh, he wanted t’ brag about gettin’ married.” 

Angela laughed. “Giorgio’s the limit!” she said. 

“He’ll make a good husban’ for someone,” Mrs. Grania 
remarked casually. 

The girl made a grimace, and went on with her work. 

“Why don’t you marry Giorgio yourself?” Mrs. Grania 
suggested after a while. 

“Marry Vinti! I guess not!” 

“No?” Mrs. Grania asked evenly. “Why not?” She 
was carefully calculating her way. 

“Why, he’s an old man, mother. I don’t want t’ marry 
an old man.” 

“Psha!” said Mrs. Grania. “He’s on’y old enough t’ 
have sense.” 


84 


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“Well, if he's got sense he won’t expect t’ marry me.” 

“Huh! Every woman in the place is crazy t’ get 
him.” 

“They can have him,” Angela retorted. “I’m willin’.” 

“Willin’!” her mother cried with warmth. “Willin’ t’ 
let some other woman get the best man you’ll ever have 
a chance t’ marry?” 

“Sure. I don’t want him. An’ he ain’t the best man 
I’ll ever have a chance t’ marry. He’s bad.” 

“Bad! What d’you mean?” 

“He’s bad. You know as well as I do. He’s lived with 
a dozen women an’ never married one of ’em. Let him 
keep on with them—there’s lots more women like that. 
But I ain’t that kind, an’ I don’t want that kind of a 
husband.” 

“So! And what kind do you want, then? D’you 
expect t’ marry a saint?” 

“No, I don’t expect t’ marry a saint. But I want 
a man—better’n Vinti.” 

“Better!” cried Mrs. Grania. “Let me tell you, men 
are all alike. P’raps you think that fellah of Santos’ 
is better.” 

Angela flushed. “Yes, he is,” she declared. 

“Pah! He’s no better’n Giorgio, I tell you.” 

“He is better. You don’t know him at all.” 

“Don’t I, then! You think you’re the on’y girl he ever 
looked at, maybe. Ask him, then—ask him how many 
women he’s known; an’ then you’ll know him for what he 
is, or I’ll know him for a liar besides.” 

“O’ course I won’t ask him!” Angela said indignantly. 

“You don’t dare!” her mother shrieked. “I can see 
what he is in his face an’ in his eyes. Bah! He wants 
85 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
you an’ Giorgio wants you, an’ there ain’t any difference 
between ’em.” 

“If that was true,” Angela said, “I wouldn’t marry 
either of ’em.” 

“Don’t be a fool!” said Mrs. Grania. “You weren’t 
born t’ be an ol’ maid.” 

Angela made no reply. She had finished the dishes. 
She went over and hung the towels behind the stove, and 
started to leave the room. Her mother’s floury hand 
caught her by the wrist, and the old woman pushed her 
into a chair. 

“Listen t’ me,” she said fiercely. “‘Giorgio Vinti has 
come an’ offered t’ make you his wife. Use your head 
an’ don’t be a fool. Think what it means. He’s rich!” 

“I don’t care! He’s rotten! An’ he’s old!” 

“He’s the on’y man o’ substance in the place. He’ll 
make you proud. Don’t be a fool!” 

Angela was crying now. “I wouldn’t marry him for all 
the money there is! You’re tryin’t’ sell me! You know 
what Vinti is! Everyone knows what he is! Marry 
him yourself!” 

She began to shout, grown suddenly hysterical. 
“They’d talk about me the way they talk about the other 
women he’s had in his shack. I won’t marry him! I’ll 
tell Father Pasquale what you’re doin’ t’ me. You’re jus’ 
as bad as Vinti! I’ll pray to the Virgin Mary t’ curse 
you, if you make me do this . . .” 

Her voice trailed off into incoherence. She sat rigid in 
her chair, weeping, babbling unintelligible phrases. Mrs. 
Grania let her spend herself for a minute or two. Then 
she went over to the pail on the sink-board and brought 
the girl a cup of water. 


86 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

“Here!” she said. “Drink, an’ stop your foolishness” 
Angela took the cup and put it to her lips. Her teeth 
chattered against the rim as she drank. Then she handed 
the cup back to her mother. She dried her swollen face 
with her apron and pushed the hair back from her damp 
forehead. Her loveliness had disappeared, drowned in 
the flood of her tears. Her face was blotched and swollen, 
her body had lost its buoyancy. She had wasted her spirit 
and her stamina in a futile protest. 

It was for this moment that Mrs. Grania had waited 
and manceuvered. She was a wise woman—a woman of 
experience. She had observed the victors and the 
defeated in many an encounter. She allowed Angela to 
sob for a few minutes, and then she talked. 

“Listen, Angy. Lm your mother. D’you think Ld 
sell you? An’ what for? You’re all I got in the world. 
I want you t’ marry Giorgio Vinti, but I ain’t gettin’ any¬ 
thing out of it. It’s for your good I want it—not mine, 
an’ not his. Any husban’ you get’ll be like Vinti, child. 
Some ain’t so bad, an’ some ain’t so good; but you won’t 
know till you’re married what kind of a man you’ve got. 
But I know Giorgio. He’s sowed his wild oats. He can 
forget other women now an’ cling t’ you. He’s rich. He 
can give you things t’ make you happy. He’s promised 
t’ build a new house for you, an’ he’ll do more.” 

“I don’t love him,” Angela protested. 

“No. But he loves you, an’ that’s more important. 
Women don’t need t’ be loved t’ be happy. If they get 
love, they’re lucky. What they need is somethin’ t’ love, 
an’ God sends ’em children for that. You think you love 
that Joe over to Santos’. Well, p’raps you do. An’ 
p’raps he loves you. But how long? Love don’t run 
87 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
this world, Angy. If it did, money wouldn’t mean so 
much. But it don’t, anyway, an’ poor people ’re fools t’ 
think they can afford it. You been friendly with Gior¬ 
gio all your life. You can go on bein’ friendly with him 
—that’s all there is to it!” 

“Oh, mother! It’s not all!” 

“I say it is all. You think there’s somethin’ holy 
about bein’ married? There ain’t—on’y as a woman an’ 
her husban’ make it holy. You always been clean an’ 
pure as a girl, ain’t you, Angy?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, you’ll be clean an’ pure as a wife, doin’ the work 
God made you for, whatever man you marry. You got 
t’ use your brains, girl. Life’s made o’ work an’ hard 
sense—not o’ feelin’s. You were all right before you met 
this Joe, an’ you’ll be all right again after you forget 
him.” 

Mrs. Grania paused, but Angela said nothing. 

“You’re young, Angy. You don’t understand these 
things. I’m old an’ I know all the sorrow o’ makin’ mis¬ 
takes. Look at me now, an’ some day you’ll thank God 
you’re not like I am. Take Giorgio, in God’s name, for 
better or worse, an’ don’t be a fool. He’s the on’y man 
o’ money you’ll ever meet on the Fist. Don’t be a brain¬ 
less thing, but take your good fortune while you’ve got 
the chance. Yes, good fortune! For who are you? I’m 
your mother, an’ I say it. Who are you? When you’ve 
got Vinti’s money by you you’ll find life’s different from 
all you’ve ever known. Bein’ in his house, with his chil¬ 
dren round you, you’ll amount t’ somethin’; you’ll be 
somebody.” 

Angela still wiped her eyes from time to time, but un- 

88 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
der the flow of her mother’s talk she had grown calm. 
She was tired out. 

“Here!” said Mrs. Grania, as she handed the girl a 
glass of wine. “Drink this, an’ go in an’ lay down. Be 
sensible, Angy, an’ begin t’ make up your mind. Re¬ 
member what I’ve told you, an’ don’t shame your 
mother.” 

As Angela lay on her dingy unmade bed, her thoughts 
became clearer, sharper, nervous—jumping from phase 
to phase of her problem. She thought of Vinti and she 
was stirred by a swift revulsion. She thought of Joe, 
and a gentle passionate desire moved in her breast. 
There was something about Joe that she didn’t under¬ 
stand, and all her senses were eager to probe the mys¬ 
tery. She loved to see him, loved to hear him talk and 
sing and whistle and laugh; she longed to touch him— 
to trace the outline of his ear with her finger-tips, to dis¬ 
arrange the heaviness of his black hair. Every fact of 
his personality cast back into Angela’s being the reflected 
brightness of her own idealized desires. Beside the 
flashing beauty of Joe’s attractiveness Vinti was like an 
unimportant pale shadow. Now the older man had taken 
on an aspect of terror. 

But in spite of all that, the picture of a future with 
Vinti stole quietly into Angela’s thoughts—the great new 
house, herself as the mother of his children. Repeatedly 
she turned it out and dragged her mind away to contem¬ 
plate the splendid image of Joe; but it returned each time 
—that vision of the future that her mother had planted 
in her consciousness—and at last it found a champion in 
the girl’s own breast—a champion ready to present, to 
89 


jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
argue, to urge Vinti’s cause. This new voice repeated 
interminably Mrs. Grania’s arguments. 

“He’s rich, and he loves you,” it said. 

“I hate him! He’s bad!” Angela retorted. 

“He’s not so bad, as men go, an’ Joe’s not so good.” 

“I love him—Joe.” 

“Yes, but you’d be a fool t’ marry him an’ slave all 
your life. Vinti’s rich, remember. You won’t have t’ 
work in the fields if you marry Vinti.” 

“I don’t care. I hate him.” 

“Wouldn’t you like a fine new house?” 

“I’d rather live in a shed with Joe!” Angela cried. 

“In a shed!” the voice considered. “In a shed! 
Well, it might come t’ that with Joe. Think o’ your 
children livin’ in a shed!” 

“I love Joe!” she exclaimed desperately. 

“Yes, an’ Joe loves you. But he’s loved other girls.” 

“So has Vinti. Joe couldn’t be as bad as him.” 

“P’raps,” the voice conceded. “Who knows? Any¬ 
way, Vinti’s done with women, but Joe’s young yet. 
He may see others that he’ll like.” 

“He won’t. He’s honest. He told me.” 

“Yes? Well . . . But suppose your husband died? 
As Mrs. Vinti you’d be safe. You’d have a fine house an’ 
some money, an’ Joe would still be somewhere. But as 
Joe’s widow you'd be out in the road. You’d have t’ 
come home t’ this house. You’d have t’ work to feed 
the baby you might have. An’ Giorgio wouldn’t want 
you then.” 

“I’d work for Joe’s baby, but I’d hate Vinti’s.” 

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t,” the voice mocked. “Women 
don’t hate their children.” 


90 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

“I would hate it!" Angela whispered wildly. 

The only answer was mild laughter. Then the voice 
began again. 

"It’s a fine house Giorgio’s goin’t’ build." 

“I wouldn’t live in it! I hate him!" 

“He’s generous. Remember the little cakes he used t’ 
give you riding home from school? An’ the Chinese 
nuts? He’s jolly, too. He always liked you. You 
think he’s bad ’cause you know all about him, but you 
don’t know all about Joe, so you think he’s good." The 
voice laughed again. “There’s more’n one way o’ judgin’ 
a man. 

“You’re a sensible girl," the voice went on, after a 
pause. “Love ain’t everythin’, remember; an’ when it’s 
gone it’s a good thing t’ have a house an’ some money, 
just like your mother says. An ol’ husband can be 
managed, too; but young fellahs are funny. They often 
change their minds." 

“Joe’s mine!" Angela cried. 

“Well, all right. You’ll have t’ take the consequences, 
o’ course. Your mother’s told you all about it, an’ she 
knows. She ain’t had any too good a time in life. I 
guess she’d like t’ see you better fixed. Why don’t you 
take her advice? Ask Father Pasquale, if you want to. 
He’s a good man. But don’t forget the grand new 
house." 

Thus doubts took possession of Angela’s soul. The 
sharp certainty of her first reaction was gone; she had 
begun to wonder what she ought to do. At last she went 
to sleep from sheer weariness; and later, when her mother 
found her so, she closed the door of the room and went 
quietly about her tasks. 


91 


& XI 


Mrs. Grania had determined that she would become the 
mother-in-law of Giorgio Vinti. She felt equal to man¬ 
aging her daughter to this end, if she could have a free 
hand to do so; but the free hand she so much needed to 
bring Angela to the point of acquiescence was endangered 
by the presence of Joe. Mrs. Grania saw that he might 
at any moment step into the leading role in the action— 
might carry the heroine off at will and become the hero- 
bridegroom in a comedy for the delight of all the Fist; 
or he might give the whole piece a tragic cast by unto¬ 
ward intervention of another sort. As she thought of him 
and these possibilities, the little woman came to hate him 
with an intense and personal hatred that was half fear. 
Joe’s youth was against her; if she could, she would 
have turned him into a state of doddering decrepitude. 
His good looks were against her; if she could, she would 
have made him hideous, loathsome, monstrous. 

It occurred to her to challenge him openly with his 
past and drag the truth out of him, whatever it might 
be, in Angela’s presence; but she knew that if she made 
the attempt he would surely lie to save himself, knew that 
Angela would believe the baldest lie he could tell. 

She might have left it to Vinti to settle with him, but 
her pride was alert against such a compromise. Vinti 
should never be able to say that he had saved the girl 
92 


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from someone else. No, Mrs. Grania would herself re¬ 
move all impediments to fhe marriage. The girl should 
go to Giorgio when the time came, free, unhampered 
and uncompromised; poor, but complete in pride and 
reputation. 

Mrs. Grania must accomplish her purpose alone. Her 
husband was of no assistance to her—she dominated him. 
Her daughter must be coerced. Joe was likely to be¬ 
come aggressive at any minute. The other men and 
women of the Fist must be kept in ignorance, or they 
would form an alliance of jealousy against her. Father 
Pasquale was an unknown quantity. Mrs. Grania was 
mildly afraid of him, but she felt that if the others could 
be managed, he could. 

She was all alone, and she could not hurry things. 
For a woman of her temperament it was the most trying 
of situations—waiting, waiting, filled with fears, imagin¬ 
ing a thousand possibilities of disaster that would never 
occur; helpless, hoping, eager, but retarded on every 
hand. And there in the background stood Vinti him¬ 
self, cynical, smiling, watching her. Her temper reared 
at the thought of his coolness, and her determination 
hardened. 

Yet she was cheered, in spite of all menacing circum¬ 
stances, by that vision of Vinti there at her back, for she 
hoped that she might profit from the association through 
the mere automatic operation of his good luck. 

Giorgio’s good luck was notorious; it stood by him in 
important undertakings and in the details of small af¬ 
fairs. On this Monday it operated as usual, and Mrs. 
Grania profited, as she had hoped. 

Giorgio had left the Fist early in the morning and 


93 



£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
had gone to Providence, intending to talk business with 
two or three of his old friends, wholesale dealers in fish, 
preparatory to making his plans for the summer’s work. 

He called first on his friend Mr. Romas, a thin, swart 
old man, Portuguese like Giorgio, who had a warehouse 
down on one of the mouldy wharves of the city. The 
building was very dark and old; the thick odour of brine 
hung heavy in the air. Narrow stairs went steeply up 
to a small office on the second floor, and here, in the 
dingy, low-ceiled room, Giorgio found his friend looking 
through an ancient ledger for lack of something better 
to do. When Giorgio entered, the old man paid no heed. 
Vinti pounded with his stick and cried out, "Hi there! 
Romas!” Then the man at the desk shut the ledger with 
a bang, leaped to his feet, and held out his hands. 

"Giorgio!” he cried. "Come in, you old bear! Come 
in an’ wake me up! You bring the smell of the sea into 
this old tomb!” 

"Ah, you’re on’y sleepin’ here, then!” Giorgio 
laughed and shook hands. "I thought you was dead, 
sure!” 

"Dead!” the other exclaimed with a gesture. "Yes! 
Everything is dead!” 

Giorgio nodded. "Everything!” he agreed. "I left 
the sea dead this mornin’!” He handed Mr. Romas a 
cigar, and sat down with his stick between his knees. 

"The sea?” Romas repeated. "No, not the sea. You’ll 
find it lively enough down there this summer.” 

Giorgio laughed evenly. "I hope so,” he said, "but I 
left it dead this mornin’.” 

"You’ll find it lively enough, I tell you! The Trust’s 
94 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
goin' down into your waters this summer an’ clean you 
out.” 

“Yes?” said Giorgio, with a squinting smile. “The 
Trust?” The smile faded slowly from his face. Hard 
lines settled about his mouth and a hard light gleamed 
in his eyes. “You mean it?” he asked at last. 

“I hear so.” 

“It means a fight, eh?” Giorgio gripped his stick and 
leaned forward. “Listen. Last year I had four traps 
on the shores o’ the Fist. This year I'll have eight—• 
ten. I'll sow those waters so full o’ nets they won’t be 
able t' navigate their boats.” 

“That’ll be a good excuse for ’em t’ rip your nets to 
pieces,” the other warned. 

“Bah! They can’t rip ’em all. An’ their nets is just 
as easy ripped as mine, eh?” 

“Look out, Giorgio! They ain’t afraid, an’ they got a 
lot o’ money.” 

“We’ll help ’em spend some of it, then!” 

“They’ll beat you in the end.” 

“Well, they’ll have t’ fight me first. Look, Romas, I’m 
goin' t’ fish this summer. You better plan t’ sell some 
fish.” 

Romas shrugged. “You never swamped us yet,” he 
smiled. “My warehouse is empty now.” 

“I’ll send you fish before the first of April. Get ready! 
I’m goin’t’ fish this summer, I tell you.” 

“Good! I’m waitin’ for you.” 

They talked business for ten minutes more, and then 
Giorgio left Romas to his dreamy perusal of old ledgers. 

Vinti visited two of his other business friends that 

, 95 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
day—Yankees who had no warehouses but carried on 
their activities, in clean linen and creased trousers, at 
offices in prominent office buildings. They were suave, 
middle-aged men, alert, intelligent, familiar with the 
market, and they represented, respectively, New York 
and Boston dealers of importance and long standing. 
They greeted Giorgio casually, and though they had little 
to say, that little was reassuring. 

His luck that day lay in knowing, so early in the sea¬ 
son, of the Trust’s intended invasion. He laughed 
quietly as he thought of the coming contest. Let them 
come! They’d find him and his men on duty, and what¬ 
ever fish there might be in the waters running into his 
traps. 

As he walked along, filled with these thoughts, he was 
jerked out of his optimistic contemplation by a prod 
from his subconsciousness He was passing a Chinese 
shop, and there, in the very middle of the window, stood 
a great bowl, elaborately covered with a design in gilt 
and red and yellow and green, and it was full of Chinese 
nuts piled up like the cone of a mountain. 

Giorgio laughed to himself as his thoughts turned to 
Angela. He went in and bought a quantity of the nuts. 
But as he resumed his walk to the train, the package of 
nuts seemed a cheap present for a man of his standing 
to take to his sweetheart, and he turned back to the 
centre of the city, determined to purchase a gift more 
suitable. 

On this expedition Giorgio’s emotions were inactive. 
The transaction was a matter of his mind alone, and his 
mind was very much concerned with his pride. He went 
into a prominent jeweller’s shop and began to examine the 
96 


■*' AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 
trays of lockets that were presented for his inspection. 
He had decided to purchase a locket rather than a ring, 
because he was reserving the ring to be the symbol of 
his triumphant betrothal. The present gift was to be 
splendid, but it was a tentative gesture only, an earnest 
of what was to follow for his bride, a suggestion of the 
splendour his wife might expect to count upon. 

As he examined the lockets, he tried to visualize the 
appearance of each one against the clear skin of Angela’s 
throat, and as he brought the picture of her again and 
again before his mind he became conscious of her abso¬ 
lute worthiness of the best he could bring himself to 
purchase. None of them seemed sufficiently good; Gior¬ 
gio wanted something that would flash and sparkle— 
something that would dazzle the eyes of the beholders. 
But the salesman quoted a list of prices that left in 
Giorgio’s mind no doubt of the excellence of the goods 
before him, and at last, with the astute salesman’s as¬ 
sistance, he purchased a particular locket and a chain. 
They were placed in a small velvet-covered case with the 
firm’s great name printed in gold within, and Giorgio 
departed. 

He reached the Fist late in the afternoon. It was 
growing dark. He smiled as he went along. He would, 
he thought, go at once and see what progress his pros¬ 
pective mother-in-law had made in his suit. Inciden¬ 
tally, she might invite him to have supper. He strode on 
to the door of the Grania house and rapped; again his 
luck was with him—the family was just sitting down 
to the meal. 

At his entrance there was a silent turmoil of emotion 
in the room. Angela looked at him with wild fear in her 
97 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE J 
eyes; Mrs. Grania’s eyes went back and forth from his 
face to her daughter's, while a smile, frozen on her lips, 
made her own face hideous. This was not the time for 
Vinti’s interference, she thought, and she did not know 
how to meet the awkward situation his coming had 
created. Mr. Grania, giving no sign of his feelings, held 
out his hand for the great man’s hat. But Giorgio, per¬ 
ceiving how things were, protested that he had not come 
to stay. Thereupon Mrs. Grania seemed to waken from 
a trance and became voluble in her insistence that he 
sit down. 

Vinti was ready to take a hand in the situation—he 
had his cards in his pocket—and at last he allowed 
himself to be persuaded. Another chair was placed at 
the table, he gave his hat and stick to Mr. Grania, and 
hung his coat behind the door; he took a package from 
its pocket and laid it, with a larger package that he 
carried, beside the plate that had been placed for him. 
Mrs. Grania filled his tumbler with wine; then they all 
sat down. 

“Before we eat an’ drink,” Giorgio began, “I want t’ 
say I come t’ see Angela. I been t’ town to-day an’ saw 
somethin’ she used t’ like when she went t’ school, an’ I 
brought her some.” 

He smiled kindly at the girl as he spoke, and passed 
the package of Chinese nuts across the table to her. An¬ 
gela took it listlessly. She opened the papers and smiled 
sadly at sight of the contents; then she bit her lip to 
keep back the tears, for she was suddenly swept by a 
recollection of happy times that now seemed dead for 
ever. 

“Thanks,” she murmured. “I used t’ like Chinese 
98 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
nuts.” She bit her lip again and held her breath, for 
still the tears continued to rise. 

"Ah!” Giorgio cried, looking about him trumphantly. 
"I knew I was right! Let us drink, now, to Angela's 
happiness for ever!” 

They raised their glasses, but Angela was still fumbling 
with the package of nuts. The others sat with the glasses 
in their hands, looking at her, waiting for her. She felt 
those eyes upon her, and at last she took up her glass 
and sipped the wine. But she did not look up; she 
did not dare; and as she put her glass back upon the 
table, two great tears escaped from her lowered lashes, 
ran down her cheeks, and fell upon her breast. 

The others, seeing those tears, sat in embarrassed 
silence. Giorgio was moved to a kind of pity for the 
girl. Mrs. Grania had a terrible premonition of failure; 
she was angry with Giorgio for this interference. 

The old woman kept a grip on her faculties, but she 
was already wearying of the fight. Because of her 
tremendous ambition, the possibility of a splendid vic¬ 
tory, she was not appalled; she was, nevertheless, being 
swiftly worn down to that condition in which, in des¬ 
peration, she would either achieve a brilliant success or 
accept annihilation with valour. It angered her now that 
Giorgio, who should be her dependable ally, was creat¬ 
ing difficulties for her. She didn’t know how to act; but 
she turned to her daughter. 

"What ails you, Angy?” she asked quietly, leaning 
toward the girl, but Angela, making no answer, buried 
her face in her arms on the table and began to cry. 

"Let her alone,” Giorgio commanded. "She’ll be better 
soon. Let’s eat.” 


99 


j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 

Mrs. Grania served the meat-pie that was the main 
dish of the meal, and for a time they all ate without 
speaking. Mrs. Grania was at last able to induce Angela 
to take some food and to drink her wine. By the time 
they had finished, the girl was calm and sadly quiet. 

Then Giorgio pushed back his chair. 

"Are you goin’ t’ marry me, Angela?” he asked. 

He was abrupt. The girl stiffened, threw at him a 
look of mingled weariness and fear, and dropped her 
eyes again. 

"I don’t know,” she said listlessly. 

Giorgio looked at Mrs. Grania with raised eyebrows. 
She gave him a steady look in return. 

"Well, don’t hurry about it,” he said to Angela. "I 
know how you feel. You’re young. But you got t’ get 
married some day, an’ I’ll be kinder to you’n any other 
man on earth’ll be. I want you more’n anyone else can 
want you.” 

Angela raised her eyes and looked into his. 

"You don’t love me right,” she blurted out. 

"Eh!” he cried. “I do, child! O’ course I do!” 

"You’re a bad man,” she murmured. "Mrs. Lemos 
says it’s a sin for you t’ marry any woman.” 

"Mrs. Lemos?” Giorgio repeated quietly. "What does 
Mrs. Lemos know? I am bad; but Mrs. Lemos ain’t 
my judge. I want t’ be better, an’ I will be if you’ll 
come an’ help me. I need you.” 

There was silence. Nobody spoke. They all expected 
Angela to say something further, but she gave no sign. 

"Look,” Giorgio said at last. "Don’t think I don’t love 
you, girl. I’m here t’ say I do before your people. An’ 
why else would I want t’ marry you? I been thinkin’ o’ 
100 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
you for years, watchin’ you grow up from a little thing, 
waitin’ for you. I’ve thought about you too long t’ have 
you go back on me now. I was thinkin’ about you all 
day in town, too, an’ I brought you a present you’ll like 
more’n Chinese nuts.” 

Giorgio opened the velvet case and placed it on the 
table where all might see the bright beauty of its con¬ 
tents. Mrs. Grania and her husband leaned forward to 
look; then they gazed at Giorgio in amazement—only 
love could make a man so generous. Mrs. Grania felt a 
renewed justification in her cause; her husband put away 
his last doubts of Giorgio’s genuineness. But Angela, 
after one swift glance at the jewel, turned her face away. 

"What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?” Giorgio 
asked. 

"I can’t take it,” she said. 

"Why not? It’s for you—it’s yours!” he exclaimed. 

He reached forward and lifted the chain with its pen¬ 
dent locket from the case; then he rose, went around the 
table, and fastened it clumsily on Angela’s neck, as if to 
make her understand that he meant what he said. 

At sight of the chain and locket sparkling at her 
daughter’s throat, Mrs. Grania’s wearying forces rallied 
round a white plume of inspiration. She saw the trinket 
as a strong weapon that Vinti had put into her hand, 
and she grasped it with a metaphorical firmness, pledging 
her utmost fidelity to maintain it inviolate, secure. Here, 
she felt, she was moving in the path of Giorgio’s noto¬ 
rious good luck. As long as she could hold this weapon— 
as long as she could keep the chain and locket gleaming 
there at her daughter’s throat—Joe, her strongest, her 
most daring enemy, would be powerless to rout her. It 
101 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
was like a charm against which he would be impotent. 
It marked Angela as the property of the man who had 
placed it there. Mrs. Grania massed her forces anew and 
concentrated them to hold that shining ornament secure 
where Giorgio’s clumsy fingers had fastened it. 

“There!” Vinti said, stepping away and looking at the 
girl. “Now it’s yours! You ought t’ have pretty things. 
I hope it makes you happy. You ought t’ be happy. 
Don’t let ’em worry you about anythin’. If they worry 
you, you come an’ tell me.” 

He turned as he finished speaking and took his coat 
from the nail and swung into it He got his stick from 
the corner and found his hat; then, with a curt, offhand 
“Good night,” he went out and closed the door. 


102 


* XII ^ 


As the door closed behind Giorgio, Angela’s hands, 
tremulous, shaking, were raised to fumble with the clasp 
of the chain which he had fastened on her neck. The 
gentle weight of it, stirring quietly as she breathed, was 
like the touch of an encircling snake upon her skin. 
Her body trembled under the contact; her face was set, 
her eyes staring. 

It was an intricate, competent little clasp, intelligently 
designed to remain safely locked except at the suggestion 
of a precise, gentle pressure at a particular point of its 
surface. Before Angela had found this secret of release 
her mother stepped to her side and grasped her wrist. 

“Stop!” she cried. Her voice was husky with the in¬ 
tensity of her determination. 

Angela tried to free herself from her mother’s grasp, 
but the hand that held her was like a rope—strong, 
hard, flexible, and it held her fast. 

“Have I got t’ beat sense into you?” the woman asked. 

“Let me be!” Angela cried, paying no heed to her 
question. 

“Hey! Listen!” Mr. Grania interposed. 

Mrs. Grania turned at the unexpected sound of his 
voice, and Angela’s left hand went to her neck to tear 
the chain away. 

At that moment the door opened—a crack a foot wide 

103 


j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

—so that they could all see the blackness of the night 
outside, and Vinti’s voice, out of the darkness, said, ‘'It’s 
beginnin’t’ rain!” Then the door was closed again with 
a slight slam. 

The three people in the room stood as if awe-struck, 
and listened to the sound of dying footsteps on the 
frozen ground. So sudden was the interruption of the 
intense little drama upon which all their faculties had 
been centred, the web of their concentration had been 
shattered, their respective determinations, broken, their 
respective purposes delayed. Angela’s raised arm flut¬ 
tered down from her throat; Mrs. Grania’s grasp on her 
daughter’s arm relaxed. They stood and looked at each 
other in silence a moment, their thoughts upon the man 
withdrawing in the dark; and as they stood, like an echo 
of his personality, the sound of the rain came rapping in 
sharp staccato points upon the window and the roof. 

Mr. Grania was the first to recover the broken thread 
of his previous thought. “Well!” he exclaimed at last, 
as if dismissing the interruption; then, resuming his 
former role of pacifist, he said, “What ails you women?” 

Mrs. Grania’s grasp tightened on Angela’s wrist. 

“Bah!” she said to her husband. “Is she goin’t’ marry 
him or not?” 

“No!” Angela cried out. “I won’t! Look!” she said, 
turning to her father. “What makes you let them do 
this to me?” 

“Hush!” he cautioned her. “Listen. If it wasn’t for 
your good d’you suppose I’d let ’em do it?” Then to 
his wife he said, “ ’Twon’t do no good t’ kill her!” 

“Kill her! Kill her!” Mrs. Grania cried. “The 
fool! Is she goin’t’ let him go, then?” 

104 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE & 

“Listen, Angy,” Grania said. “Why don’t you marry 
Giorgio? It's for your good. He’s honest about it. 
You won’t find a better man for a husban’.” 

“Are you as bad as him?” Angela cried. 

“That don’t matter,” he said. “Maybe I am, maybe 
not. But you can’t marry me. You don’t know any¬ 
thin’ about men. Take my advice: do as your mother 
tells you.” 

“I won’t!” the girl cried. “I hate him!” 

In a sudden access of anger, fear and desperation she 
pulled away from her mother’s grasp and turned swiftly 
toward the narrow hall, her hands raised to release the 
clasp of the chain on her neck. 

In an instant the old woman was after her like a 
tigress. Her eyes were wild, her lips were drawn tight 
across her yellow teeth, her breath whistled in her throat. 
As she leaped from her place her hand went reaching like 
a claw. She faced defeat—defeat and shame. Every 
faculty was strained to save her from that disaster. She 
must, at all costs, keep that locket shining at her 
daughter’s throat. 

She moved swiftly around the table in pursuit of the 
girl, crying madly, “Come back! Come back here, you! 
Come back, d’you hear me!” But Mr! Grania, seeing 
her wildness, put out his hand and arrested her progress. 

“Let go!” she screamed at him. “Let me go! I’ll 
teach her! I’ll kill her or I’ll make her do what I 
say!” 

“Shut up!” Grania commanded. “Keep quiet!” 

But the woman’s rage increased. Her eyes protruded 
with madness, sweat stood in an unhealthy mist upon her 
forehead, her lips were flecked with foam. 

105 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 

They could hear Angela slam and lock her door. 

“Let me go!” Mrs. Grania shrieked, and she bit at her 
husband’s strong restraining arm. 

But her teeth had barely fastened upon the tensed 
muscles when her grip relaxed, her hand went to her 
bosom, and with a groan she sank slowly down at his 
feet. 

Suddenly the house seemed filled with an intense 
silence. 

"God!’ Grania exclaimed under his breath. 

He stooped to lift his wife, and as he leaned over her, 
there stabbed through his anxiety a kind of sympathy— 
a kind of pity. She lay in a heap, small, huddled, very 
still. The lines of her body showed through the dis¬ 
ordered mass of her garments, and he was struck with 
her worn frailness. 

"Angy!" he called. "Come here, quick! Your 
mother’s fainted!’’ 

Angela made no response 

"Angela!" he called again, raising his voice. 

But still the girl paid no heed. 

Grania was desperate with anxiety and terror. His 
wife lay too still—she didn’t seem even to breathe. He 
didn’t know what to do. "Angela!" he cried, again 
and again. "Angela! Angela! Angela!" He was call¬ 
ing to his wife as much as to his daughter, hoping child¬ 
ishly that she might make some response to his noise. 

"Angy! Your mother’s dead! Come here! Angela!" 
He was shrieking at last, hideously, like a beast. And 
at last Angela, appalled at the wildness of his voice, 
opened her door and came cautiously down the hall. 

When Grania heard his daughter coming, his cries 
106 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 
ceased suddenly and he gazed intently into the still, white 
face of his wife. Angela was terrified at the sight of her 
parents there together. Her father knelt with one knee 
on the floor; against the other he had raised his wife's 
limp body. He had opened her dress at the throat, and 
he was pushing the hair back from her forehead with 
methodical, senseless strokes of his hand. The little 
woman in his grasp looked like a broken thing. One foot 
was doubled under her somewhere incredibly. The 
other was extended at a crazy angle, seeming somehow 
dissociated from her body. The skinny contour of her 
ankle and foreleg, in an old shoe and a ragged cotton 
stocking, were revealed in a manner that seemed pathet¬ 
ically shameful. 

As Angela grasped this picture in an instant, her father 
raised his face to her and said, in a strange, accusing 
voice, “See what you’ve done! See what you’ve done t’ 
your mother!” 

The girl stood looking down at the figure of her 
mother; then she began to whimper. She fell on her 
knees beside the unconscious figure and gazed into the 
quiet face. She took the listless hand and felt for the 
pulse, whimpering meanwhile. A fear that she had never 
before known held her in its clutch. She was too ter¬ 
rified to speak or to cry. Suddenly she rose and opened 
the door to the bedroom off the kitchen. 

“Lift her on to the bed,” she said. 

Grania looked at the girl stupidly for a minute, then 
he dully obeyed. 

“Get some brandy,” Angela commanded, and her father 
turned toward the hall. The girl pulled off her mother’s 
shabby slippers and began to undo her clothes. She 
107 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
pushed a pillow under the frowzy grey head. Then she 
stood looking into the unresponsive face that had so re¬ 
cently been filled with passion. She knew that her 
mother was dead, but she could not admit it to herself, 
for a tide of fear was rising in her, and only her refusal 
to admit the fact saved her from being overwhelmed. 
When her father brought the brandy, she spread it on 
her mother’s lips and nostrils, and forced a few drops 
into the silent mouth. 

'Til go an’ get Mrs. Silvia,” he proposed. 

"No,” she said. 

"No?” 

"No.” 

She pulled a covering over her mother’s body and lis¬ 
tened again for the beat of the passionate heart; but 
there was no response to her seeking, and the tide of fear 
rose in her. There was something terrifying and awful 
about the dead woman’s plunge into eternity. It was as 
if she had deliberately gone away—as if things had be¬ 
come unbearable for her—as if she had been driven out— 
driven out of the world. 

Yes, she had been driven out—by Angela. The girl’s 
father had accused her: "See what you’ve done t’ your 
mother!” She stood looking into the woman’s still face, 
and slow tears began to run down her cheeks. A great 
pain rose in her, contracting her throat. She would never 
again hear that crying, querulous voice. She sank on 
her knees beside the bed, and the tides of fear over¬ 
whelmed her. She was terrified at herself—she had killed 
her mother. 

She whispered into the thin deaf ear. "Mother! Come 
back t’ me! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Come back. I’ll do 
108 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
whatever you want. I’ll marry him, mother. Speak f 
me! Say you’re glad. I’m doin’ it for you. Listen! 
I’ll marry Giorgio, so help me God! I’ll mind you, 
mother—I’ll mind you, mother—I’ll do anything! But 
don’t leave me like this. Speak t’ me—oh, speak t’ me!” 

The thin lips made no response, the closed eyes gave no 
sign. The rain pounded on the roof. 

“Don’t you hear me?” Angela cried. She placed her 
head beside her mother’s head on the pillow and wept. 
A strange, quiet love, of which she had never before been 
conscious, flowed out of her like an essence and bathed 
her mother’s body. Nothing in the world was so dear, so 
precious as that thin frame beneath the bed-clothes. She 
kissed the wrinkled cheek beside her, and wet the face 
with her tears. She was responsible for this—her own 
great loss. Above everything else in life now, she wanted 
to atone; she longed to sacrifice herself to prove the 
beauty of her love, the depth of her contrition and her 
sorrow. 

“I’ll marry Giorgio,” she said again to the senseless 
figure on the bed. “I promise t’ do as you want, if you’ll 
only forgive me. I’ll go an’ tell him I’m ready. I been 
bad t’ you, but I’ll do what you want.” 

She clasped one thin hand in hers and pressed it to 
her lips, and kneeling there beside the bed, she wept in 
agony for all her mother’s pain. 

After a while her father came in from the kitchen and 
stood restlessly watching her. He couldn’t weep himself, 
although the world seemed strange and empty. Without 
his wife, life was too terrible for tears. 

“It’s no use, I guess—is it?” he said at last. “I better 
go an’ get Mrs. Silvia?” 


109 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 

Angela raised her face, wet with tears. 

“Yes,” she said, “you better go. Tell her t’ come right 
over—mother’s dead. An’ tell Giorgio Vinti I want 
t’ see him.” 

The man went out. 

Angela rose from her knees and went to her own room. 
There, without looking at herself in the stained mirror, 
she took from the pincushion where she had thrown them, 
the chain and locket that Vinti had brought her from 
town that day. She held the chain about her neck and 
fastened the clasp. Then she returned to her mother’s 
room and fell on her knees beside the bed. 

Thus, simply, Mrs. Grania won her great victory and 
paid the ultimate price—annihilation. Annihilation, if 
she had thought of it, would have seemed to her a fair 
price to pay. All the futile desires that she had planted— 
buried—through the uneventful years of her life had at 
last burst into the bloom of a fanatical idea in one 
gorgeous plot in her soul. To retain that splendour of 
bloom unfaded, to see it develop into actuality, made 
permanent, and standing, at last, as a monumental 
achievement justifying her whole drab existence, would 
have seemed to her, if she had thought of it, a consumma¬ 
tion so greatly to be desired that she would readily have 
agreed to the terms and clutched her bargain to her heart. 
Only—she would have liked to see the lovely consumma¬ 
tion with her mortal eyes—would at least have liked to 
know that in paying the price she had worsted Fate at 
bargaining. 

But not all the spoils are ever captured by the victor, 
and if, in this case, these precious incidental conditions 
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were denied Mrs. Grania, her victory was otherwise all 
that she could have asked for. The locket hung and 
would continue to hang, shining and beautiful, at her 
daughter’s throat. Angela’s surrender—the key to the 
entire campaign—was complete and unconditional. Joe’s 
strength became isolated and inoperative. 

Later, when the old woman lay in her coffin, victorious, 
calm, and justified, all the inhabitants of the Fist came 
and paid her homage. They marvelled at her prowess; 
they recited to each other the episodes of her uneventful 
life; they recalled her qualities of courage and'endurance. 

Angela picked up the fruits of her mother’s victory— 
bitter fruits for the girl—grieving that she should have 
died for such a false cause, in such a mistaken adventure. 

Mr. Grania was bewildered. All his life he had dimly 
hoped to be present at the enactment of some great 
event; but when his wife went down victorious, he was 
unaware of the splendours clashing about him. Now he 
could think of nothing but her absence and his own lone¬ 
liness. He could neither perceive nor value the gorgeous 
blooming that her life had gone to pay for. He saw, 
with the eyes of a man, not any gain, but only an irre¬ 
trievable loss. 


Ill 


& XIII ^ 


Angela had led the way down the hall and into the 
front room, sustained by a tragic sense of atoning for 
the crime of her mother's death, and Giorgio had fol¬ 
lowed her, sensing what she was going to do, uncom¬ 
fortably aware that he was about to profit through the 
misfortune of the Granias. It was not the way of his 
nature to take advantage of the unfortunate, and as he 
turned to close the door behind him he was suffused by 
a mood of bluff magnanimity. 

He struck a match and lighted the lamp, and as the 
light spread through the room he and Angela stood op¬ 
posite each other—two souls alone in a bright silence. 
About them moved, invisible but felt, a thousand em¬ 
bryonic possibilities of life. In a vague region they were 
to attempt to find happiness—were to pick out of the 
dim chaos of passing time an amoeba, a pupa of progres¬ 
sive existence which, on developing, should prove to be 
happiness. It was a hazardous undertaking. Even to 
people ready to resist and yield to each other sympatheti¬ 
cally, ready to work together with the best understanding 
and the best will in the world, the choices are without 
number. Lovers fail to make a right selection as often as 
those who are not in love. It is the game of life; to sit 
in at the play is to take incredible risks. 

In spite of all discrepancies and all the peculiar con- 
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AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
ditions of their case, it would be impossible to say (es¬ 
pecially in view of Giorgio’s habitual good luck) that 
their chance to make a fortunate selection was not as 
good a chance as any two people could have. Mrs. 
Grania had not been entirely wrong—happiness does 
not permanently depend on love, or on the matching of 
ages or bank accounts, or on anything that can be named. 
It is simply because it depends on innumerable uncon¬ 
sidered phrases, gestures, appearances, desires, demands, 
on concessions, pains, triumphs, on temperament, on 
character—because it depends on everthing, in short, that 
it has never been formularized and remains a mystery. 
Only those can have happiness who prize it above all 
other items in life, and by them it will be found in un¬ 
expected places. Only those can have the illusion of it 
who are willing to go blind. 

“Sit down,” Giorgio suggested. “You look tired.” 

Angela made a gesture, but did not move from where 
she stood. 

“D’you honestly want me t’ marry you, Giorgio?” she 
asked. 

“Why, yes, o’ course, Angela.” 

“Well . . she began. She paused for a moment, but 
almost immediately she went on. “Well, I’m ready.” 

He was a little shocked at her directness. He had not 
been quite prepared for it. At this sudden achievement 
of his desire his magnanimity expanded. He went over 
to her and took her hand. 

“I’m glad t’ have you say that, Angela, but I don’t 
want t’ hurry you, child. You’re in trouble now. We 
can wait awhile, if you like.” 

She shook her head. “Waitin’ wouldn’t make any dif- 

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ference. But I better tell you,” she said, after a pause, 
“I don’t love you like I think I ought to.” 

Giorgio became uncomfortable at that. He didn’t know 
precisely how to meet the unwelcome frankness of her 
words. His pride and his magnanimity contended to¬ 
gether. 

“Tell me, Angela, if you don’t love me, what makes 
you willin’ t’ marry me?” 

“I promised my mother I would. She said love ain’t 
necessary.” Before he could reply she added, “Don’t 
take me if you don’t want me. But if you want me. I’m 
willin’ t’ do as she said, ’cause now she’s dead.” 

Giorgio’s mind went out to the dead woman in the 
other room. He saw her still lying with bare feet and 
a towel round her head, as he had seen her when he came 
in. He understood that she had done this great thing 
for him—it had been her last act. He felt a deep grati¬ 
tude to her, a deep loyalty. He perceived that by her 
death the woman had given a quality of inevitability to 
this marriage that he was now discussing. He could not 
withdraw, even if he would; she had sacrificed too much. 
She had, in fact, completed her undertaking—his under¬ 
taking. It was left for him and Angela simply to per¬ 
form a series of formalities. He felt inclined to do his 
part largely, handsomely; to justify, so far as he might, 
the loyalty of his ally who was dead. 

“Of course I want you,” he said. “If you don’t love 
me, I’m sorry. I wish you did. But a man can’t have 
everything; an’ your mother was right, o' course. I’ve 
got love enough for the two of us. You’re good an’ you’ll 
be honest. If you marry me it’s more’n I deserve, an’ 
it means more t’ me than you know. No other woman 
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could give me as much. It’ll make me happy, an’ I’ll 
try t’ make you happy; an’ we’ll be able t’ get some¬ 
thing out o’ life, Angela.” 

She nodded quietly. 

“We’re engaged, then?” he asked. “We understand 
each other?” 

Again she nodded. 

“D'you want t’ let the people know?” 

“If you want to.” 

He was silent for a minute, standing beside her, then 
he said, “I want t’ kiss you, child.” 

She turned a still face toward him and closed her 
eyes. Giorgio touched her lightly with his hands and 
kissed her on the lips. He released her at once and 
turned away, conscious that his caress had evoked no 
answering pressure. In that moment he could have 
wept. In that moment he was perfectly in love with 
the girl, and his love was touched with an unwonted 
tenderness because she did not love him in return. He 
perceived the extent of her sacrifice. For the first time 
in his recollection something deep within him stirred 
in adoration of the substance of a woman. He was 
moved to pity, sympathy, awe and passion. He acknowl¬ 
edged in his heart that he was not fit to be the mate of 
this young and lovely woman, yet he could not then 
have let her go without violating his instincts as a man. 
He wanted her intensely. 

He turned back to her directly. “Don’t ever think 
I don’t love you, Angela,” he said. His voice trembled 
and his hand was extended in a gesture of fealty. “I’ve 
got faults enough, child, but don’t ever think I don’t 
love you.” 


115 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE & 

'‘I believe you, Giorgio/' she said. 

She even tried then to understand that he did love 
her; but it was beyond her grasp. There was about it 
something incongruous that her intelligence could not 
clarify. But what mattered more than understanding 
was the bare acceptance of the fact, and that was ines¬ 
capable. She was to be his wife. Her life was set. 
That was the stuff of which her future was to be made. 

In accepting the fact, she achieved a sense of atone¬ 
ment for her mother’s death. What troubled her was 
the great spread of negations that accepting it involved— 
all the things that must be abandoned and foregone— 
Joe, her own clear love, all the beauties and glories of 
which she had dreamed. 

She closed her mind against the visions that came 
crowding, closed her mind to stay her tears; and turning 
to Giorgio, she said, '"Will you tell them, then?” 

“Yes. Can I do anythin’ for you, Angela?” 

“No. There’s nothing.” 

She moved toward the door as she spoke, he opened 
it for her, and they went down the hall together. 


116 


«* XIV ^ 


When old man Santos returned from Melton the fol¬ 
lowing morning, he brought to Joe and Mrs. Santos the 
news of Mrs. Grania’s death. Joe's first reaction to 
the news was a mild elation. The field of his life, which 
had heretofore been much cluttered with conditions of 
one sort and another—a reasonable period of engage¬ 
ment between himself and Angela, numerous conventions 
vaguely sensed—seemed suddenly to have been cleared 
of all impediments, and Joe found himself in what ap¬ 
peared to be a new field. He wondered at himself. What 
had he been waiting for? Why had he not already mar¬ 
ried Angela? Well, for one thing, there had been Mrs. 
Grania. 

The old woman had never been cordial to him. She 
had never even spoken to him—had never recognized his 
existence to that extent; especially, she had never recog¬ 
nized his existence in any possible relation to Angela. 
Joe knew that she could not be neutral in the circum¬ 
stances; consequently, her lack of cordiality amounted to 
opposition. More than once recently she had tacitly 
acknowledged his existence by interrupting his conver¬ 
sations with her daughter, but these acknowledgments 
had been as vague and indirect as it was possible to 
imagine. If the woman’s attitude meant anything at all, 
Joe thought, it meant that she had neither wish nor 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
inclination to assume the dignities and duties of mother- 
in-law to him. 

His first thought, therefore, on hearing the news of 
Mrs. Grania’s passing—a thought of pity and sorrow 
for Angela—had already been preceded by a sudden 
sense of gratification that an actual, though indefinite, 
opposition had been removed from his immediate path. 
Now, as he finished his breakfast, his mind was completely 
occupied with a loyal sympathy for Angela in her grief. 
He wanted to be near her, that she might have the sup¬ 
port of his sympathy and his love. 

Old man Santos had a similar thought. 

“You goin’ over there, Joe, eh?” he asked. 

Joe looked up at him, but said nothing. 

Santos nodded. “You go,” he said. 'Til do the 
chores.” 

Joe put on his Mackinaw and cap and went down across 
the narrow wrist of land, and came at last to the house 
of his sweetheart, where Death was also. 

The sun was brightening through the steam from last 
night’s rain and it struck full upon the Grania house, 
limning clearly against the unpainted woodwork the 
motionless banner of the silent knight who for ever rides 
man down. It was a long black banner—old and turning 
green at the outer folds, from many years of use— 
gathered and caught in a little fan at the top. Against 
this gathering a rosette of faded purple ribbon was 
fastened with a black silk button, like an unhealthy 
flower with a black heart. 

Joe looked at it with a feeling of distaste. Mainly, 
he knew death as an abstraction, a thing to be talked 
about on occasion, but having nothing to do with him. 

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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

Ordinarily he could smile at it; but not now, for the 
worst thing about it was that it always left somebody 
grieving—like Angela. Death's real triumphs seemed 
to lie in the pain it inflicted upon the living. 

Joe went around to the back of the house. He found 
the kitchen door open a crack, and he didn’t know how to 
proceed. Should he knock? His hands were restless in 
his pockets. He peered into the empty kitchen—his first 
glance into the abode of his sweetheart. At last he 
pushed the door open, took off his cap, and went in. 

The house was very quiet. The silence irked him. He 
felt like an intruder; he was vaguely afraid of being 
found there alone. Where was Angela? He had come 
to see her, and he finally took his courage in his hands 
and started along the narrow dark hall toward the front 
of the house. 

At the sound of his steps, it seemed, a dim figure rose 
out of the gloom. It was as if he had evoked out of 
the smothering shadows of the hall a deeper shadow, 
silent, sorrowful, sensed rather than perceived, at first, 
and then perceived, shadowy still, but ghostly too, now, 
from pallor faintly gleaming about the caverns of great 
eyes. 

Joe was thrilled. He went forward in tense quietness, 
and realized suddenly, unmistakably, that it was Angela 
who stood before him. As he moved forward, the climb¬ 
ing sun out of doors slashed through the final tatters of 
a broken web of mist, struck some wet and shining sur¬ 
face that reflected it again at a new angle, and a beam 
of light shot through the kitchen window and along the 
hall, breaking, splintering, gushing about Joe's shoulders, 
transforming his Mackinaw into a mass of blazonry. 
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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

He moved forward, unmindful of the glory about him; 
and one small shaft, like a random arrow of gold, over¬ 
shot him, left him untouched, found its mark beyond, 
lighting the locket on Angela’s breast into a tiny shining 
flame. 

She stood quiet as he approached, let him take her 
hand, suffered him to place his arm about her, and said 
nothing. Her silence was like a communicating pain, and 
he was impotent to ease either her sorrow or his own. 
Suddenly he missed Mrs. Grania very much—wanted to 
see her in life again, that the pain of his beloved might 
be soothed. He looked into Angela’s face, but he could 
not enfold her glance in his glance, for she would not 
give him her eyes. 

"Oh, Angel!” he whispered. "Angel!” 

She turned then, and he turned beside her, her hand 
still in his and his arm about her, and they went into 
the room where the candles burned. They stood beside 
the coffin and looked together into Mrs. Grania’s quiet 
face. The candle-flames fanned lightly to the breeze of 
their coming; shadows shifted in and out of those colour¬ 
less features. Joe knelt down and prayed for the dead 
woman’s soul—prayed sincerely, for the sake of her 
daughter. When he finished he found that Angela was 
kneeling beside him. 

They rose together. Joe turned to Angela and saw 
that she was crying. She wept without restraint, letting 
the tears come as they would, letting them fall as they 
would. Joe had a swift feeling that the woman in the 
coffin had not been worthy of such sorrowing as this. 
Every tear the girl shed cried out to him for solace. 

120 


an ISLAND CHRONICLE Jt 

At last he whispered, “Angel! Don’t! Don’t cry like 
that!” 

He went to her where she stood at her mother’s feet, 
and took her hand; but she drew it away from him in 
silence. She found her handkerchief and dried her 
cheeks. She backed against the wall and stood looking 
at him with strange, great eyes. She seemed frail and 
slim in her plain black dress—weary and exhausted, as 
if some deep force, some fundamental vitality had gone 
out of her. 

Joe was filled with pity. There was nothing that he 
would not then have done to bring her happiness. He 
stood gazing at her, embarrassed between his great desire 
and his great impotence. 

“Listen, Angel,” he said at last, “can’t I do anythin’ 
for you? I’d do anythin’ I could t’ help you.” 

For a moment she looked at him with deep eyes full 
of tenderness, sorrow, renunciation. 

“You got t’ do somethin’ for me, Joe,” she said. “You 
got t’ leave me alone.” 

He misunderstood her. 

“You mean you want me t’ go away now?” 

She nodded. 

“All right,” he said, “I’ll go.” 

He turned as he spoke and picked up his cap; then he 
paused to hear what she was saying. 

“An’ you can’t come back,” she murmured. 

“Huh? What d’you mean?” 

“You can’t come back,” she said, “ever.” 

“No?” he asked, bewildered. For a moment he won¬ 
dered if her grief had upset her mind; but there was 
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S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
in her eyes a calmness that assured him of her sanity. 

She stood shaking her head quietly. At last she mur¬ 
mured, “Never.” 

He couldn’t understand. He couldn’t believe what he 
seemed to understand. He began to ask her questions— 
began to probe at her heart to find whatever it was that 
lay behind her words; and though, for her, it was almost 
unbearable, she stood and gave an answer that was a 
blow to him for every questioning blow he hurt her with. 

“You mean you’re through with me, then?” he asked. 

“Yes.” 

“Why’s that? You don’t love me any more?” 

Her lips wouldn’t answer that. She nodded. 

“What’ve I done, Angel? I ain’t meant t’ hurt you.” 

“It’s nothin’,” she said. “I just can’t see you any 
more.” 

He felt as if he were up against a stone wall. If she 
didn’t want him, what could he do? Yet there must 
be a reason. He couldn’t go away like that. 

“This ain’t no way t’ treat me, Angel,” he said. “You 
know the way I feel about you.” 

“Yes, I know. But I can’t help it, Joe.” 

For an instant, it seemed to him, she had softened. 
That word “Joe” had held a faint suggestion of relenting. 
He looked at her wildly; hope came into his eyes, shone 
through his deepening fear, galvanized his emotions. 

He dropped his cap on the floor, and went toward her. 
“Angel,” he whispered, “you can’t do this t’ me. What’s 
the matter? Tell me about it. If it’ll help you for me t’ 
go away I’ll go; but I got t’ know what’s the matter.” 

He took her into his arms as he spoke and let his love 
flow about her like a cloak. He held her, looked into her 
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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
eyes, kissed her. She let him take her, let the cloak of 
his love flow about her, felt the warmth of it, the com¬ 
fort—the pain. But she made no response, either of 
word or gesture. He could not move her. It was as if 
he were trying to persuade a corpse, except for those 
deep eyes that hurt him. At last he relaxed, discouraged 
in his effort. He stood at her side with one arm about 
her, and talked quietly; and as he talked, his other hand 
toyed with the locket at her throat. 

“Listen, Angel/' he said. “I've known you about a 
couple o’ months now, an' I’ve loved you ever since the 
first time I saw you, over at the chapel—remember?" He 
paused and looked into her face, ready to smile; but 
she gave no sign to encourage him. Her eyes were on 
the shining locket in his fingers. 

“All along I’ve expected t' marry you," he went on, 
“an' you knew it. I ain’t much of a fellah, an’ I ain't 
got much t’ offer you, but I can work, an' I will, an' 
some day we can have a place of our own. You won't 
need t’ be ashamed o’ me, Angel. You ain't ever been 
ashamed o’ me yet, have you?" 

He paused, but she made no sign; her eyes were still 
cast down. 

“You know, Angel, I been a better fellah since I come 
t' the Fist. I used t’ be kind o' wild in N’York, I guess, 
but that was before I met you. Now, if we can get mar¬ 
ried, I’ll never be wild again. You’ll be happy, ’cause 
I'll be straight always, an' work for you. I love you, 
an' you know it, an' I ain’t goin' away an’ give you up 
without a fight." 

He paused again; his fingers were still busy with the 
locket. He waited, hoping that she would respond, but 
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j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 
she neither spoke nor looked up. Her faculties were 
concentrated into a point of intense attention—there 
was a strange fascination for her in the spectacle of Joe's 
strong, brown fingers fumbling with that shining gift 
from the man whom she was going to marry. Joe's 
fingers kept turning the locket back and forth, back and 
forth, now hiding it under his thumb, now turning it 
visible on his thumb-nail. It came and went like an eye 
with a fiery light, turning, winking, shifting, swaying— 
like the eye of a reptile charmed. If the spell should 
relax, the thing would strike—swiftly, horribly, fatally. 

She sank into a kind of stupor of fascination, watching 
that bright eye’s movement. It seemed to her dimly 
that Joe’s words were the incantation that rendered it 
harmless. She wished that he would begin to speak 
again—would continue to talk without ceasing. But he 
said nothing, and still the fiery eyes went swaying, shift¬ 
ing, back and forth, harmless under his touch. In her 
exhausted state she half dreamed, watching; waited, im¬ 
potent, for the thing to strike. 

And as she waited she grew afraid—became terrified 
at the imminence of that horrible swift gesture that she 
imagined. Her breath swelled in and out of her lungs, 
her bosom rose and fell to its surging, she began to trem¬ 
ble in her terror; her gaze followed, unwavering, unwink¬ 
ing, the short, gentle motions of that fiery eye. 

Joe felt her rising agitation and renewed his pleading. 
“Tell me why you want me t’ go away?” he asked. 

As he spoke he dropped the locket from his fingers. 
It fell against her breast. At that gentle impact and the 
sound of his voice, her being was startled to the core. 
With a little frightened cry she started out of her dream, 
124 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
escaped from her illusion, faced the reality of his impor¬ 
tuning presence, faced again the terrible necessity of 
sending him away. Emotions had been crowding within 
her—sorrow upon sorrow, fear, terror, despair. She was 
worn out, grown a little wild. 

She pushed Joe away; she drew back and stood rigid 
against the wall; her eyes were dark and flashing. 

“You got t’ go,” she cried, “an’ you can’t ever come 
near me again. I’m goin’ t’ marry Giorgio Vinti. I’m 
goin’ . . 

“Giorgio Vinti!” Joe exclaimed. 

“Yes. I promised my mother I’d marry him.” 

She turned her great eyes away from him and gazed 
into the waxy face in the coffin. 

After a moment Joe recovered from his amazement, 
understood what she had said, realized what she meant. 
He too turned and contemplated the quiet face in the 
coffin. Mrs. Grania had done this. Yes, she had done 
this! He would have liked a chance to fight it out with 
her; it angered him to know that he could never have 
such a chance. She would always be serene and passive. 
She had made sure of her victory and withdrawn, still 
ignoring his existence. 

He stooped and picked up his cap from the floor; 
then he turned back to Angela. He felt a sudden, hot 
desire to conquer the dead old woman’s peace and as¬ 
surance. 

“You don’t love Vinti, you love me,” he said to An¬ 
gela. “You been sold—I see it—sold by your mother 
t’ him ’cause he’s rich. That’s part o’, the price on your 
neck, prob’ly. Well, listen, Angel, your mother’s dead; 
she can’t make you marry him, even if you did promise. 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 

"I'll save you from that bloody bully/' he went on, 
"if you'll only let me. Give him back his chains an' 
lockets! You're too good for him. You're too good for 
me, too; but you love me, anyway, an’ you don't love 
him. That’s the difference. You don't love him, do 
you? Will you marry me, Angel? I’ll save you from 
this!” 

Angela went down on her knees at the foot of her 
mother’s coffin, and wept. "No,” she said. "I promised 
her I'd marry him, an’ I got to. I made a vow.” 

"You ain’t got to,” Joe said. "She can't make you— 
no one can make you if you don't want to. Do you 
want to? I'll save you. I'll do anything you want.” 

Angela’s head fell forward against the foot of the 
coffin. "You don’t know!” she sobbed. "You don't 
know!” 

"I know enough,” Joe said. "I know she sold you.” 

"No, she didn’t! An' she didn’t get anythin’ for me!” 

"Don't be foolish! My God! She wouldn't give you 
away —not to Vinti!” 

"Oh, you don’t know what happened!” she cried. 

Joe was desperate. "Well, what happened?” 

"Listen, Joe,” she said. She turned to him and tried 
to be calm. "Listen. I didn’t want t’ marry him, an' 
I killed her.” 

Again Joe wondered if she was losing her mind. 

"Look, Angel,” he said quietly, "you mean t’ say you 
killed your mother?” 

She nodded her assent, sobbing. "An’ now I got t' 
do like she wanted me to, 'cause I promised her I would. 

I made a vow.” 

"Does Vinti know you—killed her?” 

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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 

"Yes. An’ we’re engaged. I got t’ marry him.” 

"You have not!” he cried. 

"I have! You don’t know. I killed her an’ I got t’ 
pay. She was my mother, an’ I killed her!” 

She was overwhelmed by a sudden new access of woe. 
She sank back, resting on her heels, and her head was 
bowed almost into her lap. Her body swayed like a 
tree, in a tempest of grief. Joe fell on his knees beside 
her and put his arms about her. He raised her up, held 
her close, kissed her again and again. 

"God, Angel!” he cried. “Are you goin’ t’ let ’em 
take you away from me like this?” 

“I can’t help it,” she wailed. “I killed her an’ I got 
t’ pay! Oh, Joe, help me! Help me!” 

She was pitiful in her obstinate determination of 
sacrifice. 

“You won’t let me help you,” he said tenderly. “What 
can I do?” 

“I need you, Joe! I’ll always need you! Oh, Joe!” 

Turning toward him, she threw her arms about him 
and clung to him convulsively, sobbing, trembling, on 
the verge of hysteria. He placed her in a chair and 
soothed her with his lips and with his hands. 

“Listen,” he said. “Don’t let ’em marry you t’ Vinti 
yet. You’re all in; you’re tired out. You don’t know 
what you’re doin’. Make ’em wait before marryin’ you 
to him. Make ’em wait.” 

She sobbed and nodded. 

“An’ look, Angel! You didn’t kill your mother. She 
jus’ dropped dead—your father told ol’ man Santos so. 
You couldn’t help that! Make ’em wait, an’ you’ll see 
things different. I want you, Angel. An’ you want me. 
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# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
There ain’t anythin’ else t’ be said about who you’ll 
marry. You wait—don’t let ’em hurry you! We’ll ask 
Father Pasquale what’s right.” 

There was a sound of steps coming along the hall. 
Joe rose and took his cap from the floor. 

“I'm goin' now,” he said, “but I’ll see you later. Don't 
let ’em rush you into anythin’. Jus’ keep rememberin’, 
Angel, you’re goin’ t’ marry me.” 

As he started for the door she stood up. 

“No! Joe!” she cried. “Don’t ever come back. I 
promised her I’d marry him, an’ I got t’ pay.” 

Joe paused. “Think what I’ll have t’ pay!” he said. 
“If you let Vinti buy you—if you marry him when you 
don’t love him. I’ll never trouble you again—don’t 
worry!” 

She sank back into the chair as he finished, and Joe 
started toward the door. As he moved, his eyes caught 
a glimpse of Mrs. Grania’s face in the coffin. It seemed 
to him that there was the flicker of an expression on 
those waxen features—the flicker of an expression iron¬ 
ically acknowledging his existence and his defeat. It 
was the flicker of but an instant, both on those dead 
features and in his mind. He moved to the doorway, 
angry, sad, bewildered; but before passing out of the 
room, he was obliged to pause again, to let Rosie Ro¬ 
sario enter and look upon the dead. 


128 


XV ^ 


Father Pasquale’s parish was on the mainland; the little 
chapel at the Fist was an outpost. Mr. Grania had 
telephoned to him about the death of his wife, and in 
the afternoon of the following day the little priest ar¬ 
rived at the island. He gathered up the threads of cir¬ 
cumstance attending Mrs. Grania’s death, and went 
alone into the little chapel and prayed in the cold still¬ 
ness. He was to spend the night, as he often did when 
the weather was bad, at the house of old man Santos. 

After supper there—an elaborate meal in honour of 
the priest’s presence—Father Pasquale retired to his 
room, Joe and the old man went out to finish up the 
chores, and Mrs. Santos cleared away and washed the 
dishes. Then, one by one, they drifted back again and 
became a group in the ample kitchen. 

A kind of apprehension hovered about these four people. 
Because of their sympathy with Joe, the Santos couple 
and he were, in a manner, a group by themselves—a 
group who were about to demand from the priest some¬ 
thing like justice. And he, the judge, was apprehen¬ 
sive, for he was afraid that they might ask more, in the 
name of justice, than he could grant them. 

At last old man Santos began: 

"You’ve heard the news that Angela’s goin’t’ marry?” 

The priest nodded. "Yes, she’s going to marry 
Giorgio Vinti, I understand,” he said. 

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“D’you like that match, Father ?” 

“It doesn’t require my approval, except to see that 
the sacrament of the church isn’t violated.” 

“It would be!” Mrs. Santos broke in. 

Father Pasquale shook his head. “I don’t think so,” 
he said. 

“No?” the old woman cried; and Joe then cast at 
the priest his first look of wounded trust. 

“The parties are of legal age, they have both been 
known to me for several years, they are Catholics, and 
they are determined to marry together. What more is 
there?” 

“What makes ’em so determined?” Joe asked suddenly. 

“Do you know, my son?” 

“No, I don’t; but I know it ain’t love.” 

“No? And how do you know that, Joe?” 

Joe hesitated. 

“How do you know that, Joe?” Father Pasquale re¬ 
peated. 

“Angela’s been goin’ with me,” he stated. 

Father Pasquale looked at him tenderly for a minute. 
“Do you love Angela?” he asked. 

Joe looked into the priest’s face. “Yes,” he said 
frankly, “I want t’ marry her.” 

Father Pasquale shook his head in pity. 

“Young love,” he said, “is a strange thing, a wonderful 
thing, a terrible thing.” He turned toward Santos and 
was speaking to him. “Here’s Joe,” he went on; “he 
loves Angela; he thinks Angela loves him, and no doubt 
he has reason to think so. But she’s planning to marry 
another man. Old people like you and me cry out 
against that; we want to prevent it; we want to see 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
youth mated with youth; we want to see love satisfied. 
But Angela's own mother approved of this other match 
before she died, her father approves of it, and she her¬ 
self insists on it. What can outside people like you and 
me do when things are like that?” 

Santos made no answer. 

“She's gone crazy! She don’t know what she's doin’!” 
Joe exclaimed. 

“Do you mean that?” the priest asked quietly. 

“Yes. She’s gone crazy over her mother's death or 
somethin’,” Joe answered. 

“Tell me what you mean, Joe.” 

“Well, look, Father,” Joe said, growing more con¬ 
fident and more frank. “Angela told me this mornin' 
she still loved me; an’ then she went on sayin’ how she’d 
got t’ marry Vinti ’cause she’d promised her mother to. 
That ain’t sense.” 

“But perhaps she did promise her mother? I under¬ 
stand she even made a vow.” 

“I don’t care. Her mother’s dead. An’ anyway, her 
mother couldn’t decide for her who she’d marry.” 

“Listen, Joe. I agree that it would be wrong for An¬ 
gela’s mother to make her marry against her will; but 
if she promised her mother, don’t you think she ought 
to keep that promise?” 

“No. ’Cause her mother was wrong.” 

“Ah,” said Father Pasquale, “who knows that?” 

“I do!” Joe cried. “She made her marry him ’cause 
he’s got money. D’you suppose she’d ’a’ made her marry 
him if he was poor?” 

“I don’t know, Joe. Giorgio loves Angela too, re¬ 
member. He went to Angela’s father and mother and 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
told them so, and they accepted him as a suitor. Angela 
has accepted their judgment. I wonder if we should do 
any good now by interfering—even if we could interfere/' 

Joe looked at the priest, disappointed and desperate. 
He saw that this judge, in whom he had placed his 
trust, was against him. 

“Wait!” Santos said. “If it’s money, we can help Joe. 
He can have money if he needs it for a thing like this. 
Th’ or woman an’ I don’t need all we got, an’ I'd rather 
give money t’ Joe than anyone else—for a thing like this.” 

He looked at Mrs. Santos as he spoke. She nodded in 
agreement. “Joe an’ the church,” she said. 

Father Pasquale held up his hand. Joe looked down 
at the floor, unmoved. 

“Let us consider,” the priest said. “I like Joe. He’s 
a good lad. I’d like to see him marry Angela. But 
don’t think this is a question of money. Even if Vin- 
ti’s money had anything to do with it in the first place, 
it isn’t a question of money now.” He looked quietly 
from one to another. 

“Giorgio loves the girl,” he went on, “and, whatever 
their reason, her people agreed to the match. They had 
a right to do that—they had a right to their own 
judgment. Then Angela agreed to marry Vinti. That 
was a promise given, a vow made. Whatever made her 
give that promise—make that vow—doesn’t matter to 
us now. Angela believes that promise binds her; there¬ 
fore, I too think that it does. Neither Joe nor any of the 
rest of us can set it aside. Only Angela could set it 
aside, and then deal with her own conscience. But she 
doesn’t set it aside. Then what are we going to do? 
Shall we interfere with her conscience, lead her away 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
from the path that she sees as the right path, into a 
path that happens to suit us better? Shall we do this 
against her will, or by overcoming her will?” 

‘‘Yes!” Joe cried. “Her mother made her promise 
against her will!” 

“If that is true, Joe, Mrs. Grania has gone to answer 
for it before the throne of God. Can any one of us take 
the responsibility of answering for the life of another?” 

He paused for a while and then continued. “No, 
some men live by their inclinations, their appetites, their 
passions; some live by their consciences. To live and 
act according to the dictates of conscience and the teach¬ 
ings of the church is the best any man can do. I, for 
one, as a man and as a priest, would be afraid to try 
to draw Angela away from what she herself honestly 
sees to be right.” 

“D’you think Vinti’s followin’ his conscience?” Joe 
asked belligerently. 

“I don’t know, Joe; do you? I hope he is.” 

“Huh!” Joe sneered. “He ain’t got any conscience. 
He’s rotten! He’s rotten! He’s always had women in 
his house. He ain’t fit t’ look at Angela. That dead ol’ 
woman sold her! She ain’t marryin’ him ’cause she loves 
him—I know it! She’s marryin’ him ’cause that fierce 
ol’ woman made her; an’ she had her eye on Vinti’s 
money, all right!” 

Joe dropped his face into his hands. 

“My son,” said Father Pasquale quietly, “let him who 
is without sin amongst us cast stones at Vinti. As for 
judging Mrs. Grania, who is dead, God alone can read 
the hearts of his creatures.” 

There was silence in the room for several minutes. 

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jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

The clock wearily ticked away the thoughts of these four 
people. Outside, the wind could be heard buffeting 
against the house in a kind of immense merriness. 

“There’s nothin’, then, we can do t’ help Joe?” Mr. 
Santos asked at last. “We jus’ got t’ let this go on?” 

Father Pasquale spread out his hands. “There is one 
thing,” he said; “we can pray.” 

They all sat silent again. The clock ticked loudly; 
outside the FalstafFian winds went buffeting by. 

At last Joe lifted a haggard face out of his hands, and 
without looking at any of the others, or speaking, he took 
his coat and hat and went out into the starlit night. 

The night was luminous. The blustering winds had 
blown the sky clean, except where the Milky Way, like 
a trail of silver dust, hung suspended in an eternity of 
quietness. Stars innumerable gleamed against the velvet 
texture of the heavens. 

Joe walked abroad, unconscious of the aspect of the 
night, unconscious of the way he took, and mounted 
along the rising rim of the Fist, alone in all the world— 
above all the world. 

He was consumed by a great bitterness. He wanted to 
think, but he could not think. It seemed incredible that 
he must lose Angela, and yet he felt profoundly that he 
had already lost her. For the first time in his life he 
tasted of despair. 

He sat on the seat of the gods and looked down over 
the dreary settlement, where lights were already going out 
like golden stars. He thought of Angela standing by the 
body of that dead woman who, though her mother, had 
fastened upon her woe and a life of shame. He thought 
of Mrs. Grania, the eager, nervous, scolding little woman 
134 


& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
who would be buried in the morning—removed for ever 
from the consequences of her fanaticism. He hated her 
as he had never hated her in life. There seemed to be 
some deceitful, sneaking quality in her; something treach¬ 
erous in the way she had created this situation to suit her 
and had then withdrawn beyond the reach of all conse¬ 
quences. A sudden anger flamed up in Joe at the thought 
of her calm safety and her unending inability to give 
Angela’s promise back to her. 

In memory he saw Angela standing beside that treach¬ 
erous old woman who was dead, and she appeared more 
lovely, more tenderly beautiful than ever before. She 
stood as Joe had seen her that morning, in her plain black 
dress, with eyes grown great to hold their sorrow; and as 
he looked she seemed more sad than when she had last 
spoken to him, sending him away. He seemed to behold 
her, dim but distinct, in a kind of vision—as if his mortal 
sense of sight penetrated the shabby walls of her home 
down there and beheld her in the flesh, remotely visible, 
with yellow candlelight about her figure and illuminating 
her pitiful sad face. 

Joe stared, unconscious of the wildness about him—the 
great winds whirling across the promontory where he sat, 
the sea crashing and crying below him—sat and stared, 
enthralled, at the poignant beauty of that dear familiar 
figure; and as he stared she met his eyes—met and held 
them in a long glance of deep devotion. That look was 
like a cry to him, seeming to imply her reliance on his 
strength and his allegiance. Suddenly she held her arms 
out toward him in a swift and simple gesture of desire. 
Her body cried out in that gesture, her soul was pleading 
in her eyes; everything she was cried out to him of love. 
135 


£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

In a moment her gesture dissolved and her arms dropped 
at her sides; she shook her head sadly and turned away. 
His vision of her began to fade out in the dim distance 
beyond the transparent candlelight. 

At her going, Joe leaped to his feet, stricken with 
despair. He raised his arms in an arresting gesture; he 
called her name wildly—“Angel! Angel!”—but the 
sound was lost, out upon the sea. His pain, his defeat 
and despair were focused in that futile cry. The distant 
figure that he had tried to hail did not pause or turn but, 
even as he strove to hold it, became invisible. 

Joe sank back upon the barren ledge of rock and, bury¬ 
ing his face in his hands, he wept with the tears of strength 
overdone. 

Was his whole life to be like this? he vaguely wondered. 
He suffered in an agony of loneliness. What was the 
good of life so stark? His people back in the Vermont 
hills made no appeal to his sentiments. The crowds of 
fellows and girls of his own kind that he had known in 
New York were gone—he could not now visualize them 
or remember their names. His whole life had been filled 
with vague and shadowy figures remembered as from a 
dream. He was alone. He had a premonition that he 
would always be alone. Angela, the one reality of his 
existence, had left him. 

He raised his head at last, rose and mounted to the 
edge of the cliff. Here the winds beat upon him like a 
host of furies. Below, the black waters rolled in ever¬ 
lasting restlessness; in the cold distance above him the 
stars quivered silently. In a flash—like an inspiration— 
Joe seemed to sense the meaning of life. The great heart 
of created things whispered a message to him out of its 
136 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
mysterious wisdom—Joe seemed to catch the sharp word 
“PAIN,” and then, soon, the gentler phrase “PAIN AND 
ENDURANCE.” 

He turned away from the edge of the cliff and looked 
down into the blackness of the darkened settlement. 
Only one light remained visible—one light moving to and 
fro, like a slow firefly with a steady yellow light. Joe's 
eyes followed it unconsciously for a time, and he 
realized at last that old man Santos, lantern in hand, was 
searching for him with his faded, sympathetic eyes. 

He descended the face of the cliff, found the old man 
searching, and took him quietly by the arm. Together 
they went into the house and retired to their rooms. 

But before Joe went to sleep, there was the sound of a 
light tapping at his door, and before he had time to 
answer, somebody, indistinguishable, entered and sat 
down at his side on the bed. 

“My son!” said a voice, and Joe knew that it was 
Father Pasquale who had come in. “My son!” the 
priest repeated; and he felt for the young man's 
shoulder. 

Joe was filled with a poignancy of pain; this sympathy 
almost made him cry out; it was keen—like the touch of 
an open hand on a raw wound in his flesh. 

“I am praying for you, Joe, and I'm honest with you. 
If I could help you, I would; but matters of conscience 
are not for man's interference.” 

“I want t' do what's right,” Joe murmured, “but I 
love her, Father—I love her true an' honest.” 

Father Pasquale's hand pressed his shoulder. 

“She sent me away,” Joe continued. “ ‘Don’t ever come 
back,’ she said. An' then she said, ‘I need you; I’ll al- 

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ways need you/ What does that mean, Father? I don’t 
understand.” 

“She needs your love, Joe. A woman’s love is not the 
same as a man’s love. Women are different—they are 
the mothers of men, and that is something which we men 
can never understand. It is one of the mysteries of God. 
Because she has loved you she perhaps needs to have 
you near, that she may always know that you’re safe, 
even without her direct protection as a wife. She is no 
doubt sorrowing over you now; and you must honour 
her because she is sacrificing everything—even her hap¬ 
piness and yours—to the dictates of her conscience.” 

Joe made no reply. He was awed by a new splendour 
in this woman that he loved and had lost. He was sud¬ 
denly amazedly aware of the gulf that lay between his 
own stained ideals and the high white banner of her 
virtue. 

“Have you prayed?” Father Pasquale asked at last. 

“No. But I will—now.” 

“Yes, pray for her, Joe, as I have prayed for you both.” 

The priest went away, closing the door quietly, leaving 
Joe alone in the darkness. There was nothing in the 
world Joe would not then have done for Angela; he felt 
humble before his present vision of her. In a kind of 
dedication he pledged himself to her; he determined in 
his heart that her decision in their great affair should 
be his law; that he would help her when he could; that 
he would remain near her always, watchful and patient. 


138 


XVI <** 


Th£ next morning the black coffin containing Mrs. 
Grania’s body was placed in the ground beside the little 
chapel. There were no carriages, there was no hearse. 
The dark, trailing assemblage of people walked from the 
house to the chapel, with Father Pasquale and his acolytes, 
in cassocks and surplices, at the head, one of the lads 
bearing the great brass crucifix aloft. The coffin fol¬ 
lowed, borne on slender staves by six young men. Be¬ 
hind it Angela walked wearily, on her right and left 
hands her father and Giorgio. After them marched 
the Gossips, three abreast, quiet and observant; then, 
in groups and pairs, friends and neighbours straggled 
along, busy with talk. 

Giorgio Vinti’s attendance at the mass was an un¬ 
precedented occurrence; and Rosie Rosario, seeing him 
there at Angela’s side, emerged from the isolation of 
her despair—driven out by the fever of hatred in her 
soul. 

She had heard no word of gossip regarding her visit 
to Giorgio on the previous Sunday night, so she knew 
that he had not told, as he had threatened to do; but 
at first she did not care. Her disappointment, her failure 
to move Vinti had been all that mattered—the end of 
splendid hopes. Had he told, and had the women of the 
Fist sneered at her in consequence, Rosie was prepared 
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s AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
to brazen it out with them, to give them sneer for sneer. 
But he had not told. He had answered her instead with 
a subtler definiteness. Consequently, Rosie’s hatred of 
Vinti was intense and, seeking a vent, it turned naturally 
in the direction of Angela, who without effort had won 
the place that Rosie desired, who was now accepting, with 
a kind of heroic fortitude, all and more than all that 
Rosie had irrevocably lost. 

The two girls had been friends. Rosie had seen An¬ 
gela grow up in beauty, unblemished by the angers and 
stormy desires which she had herself known and still 
knew, and she had taken pleasure in the serene purity 
of spirit that marked her young friend. Angela’s inno¬ 
cence was so opposite to her own tumultuous longings 
that she was bound to be attracted by it because of the 
very fact of being unable to understand it. Rosie would 
look at Angela quizzically sometimes, amazed at the 
extraordinary simplicity of this girl who lived in an 
environment similar to her own. At other times there 
passed in Rosie’s mind a little sneer, for Angela’s good¬ 
ness seemed preposterous—so delicate and white, so im¬ 
pervious. Then again, she found Angela a little stupid. 
But always, constant and settled under these passing 
flurries, Rosie’s image of Angela stood, niched like the 
image of a minor saint, lovely, simple and pure, on a 
mental pedestal. 

When Joe arrived at the Fist the two girls had per¬ 
ceived him, had greeted him in their respective char¬ 
acteristic manners. Angela, all innocence, flashed her 
innocence before him with a blush and a bright light 
in her eyes that made him gasp, winning him without 
calculation at that first encounter. Rosie, more subtle, 
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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
had paused and read him, studied him, and understood 
him; had exchanged with him a swift understanding 
glance, and had hoped for his later approach. But he 
had not come. His unhesitating choice of her friend had 
piqued Rosie, but she had finally relinquished him to 
Angela, even in her thoughts, and had gone her way with¬ 
out interfering with Joe’s decision and her friend’s 
interest. 

But now Angela had abandoned Joe. Rosie had heard 
her send him away finally. At that her interest in him 
revived, and she began to watch for whatever move he 
might make, knowing, as she did, that young men do not 
die of broken hearts. She despised Angela for a fool 
for letting him go, and yet she hated her for having had 
the chance to take him; and she hated her more as she 
realized that her young friend had only let him go to 
accept the more important, permanent thing—the place 
as Giorgio Vinti’s wife—which she had herself tried for 
and failed to grasp. 

As Rosie continued to contemplate Joe, her passion in¬ 
evitably rose. But she could not attempt to inveigle 
him—not yet—she must wait for that. And while she 
waited, her emotion and her hatred, compounding to¬ 
gether into a poisonous venom, was spat in the direction 
of Angela. She was tense with the pressure of that 
poison in her soul. She could wait, because her thoughts, 
hovering about the image of Joe, saw him not as a lover, 
but as a husband; she saw him always in the glow of 
that intense desire. But she could not wait in idleness. 
She was determined to again try to snatch something 
from Fate, and she did what she could to hasten the 
encounter. 


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Casually, here and there among her neighbours, she 
repeated the overheard private things that had passed be¬ 
tween Angela and Joe on their last morning together. 
Those statements were like the audible cry of Rosie’s 
being for freedom—an instinctive propaganda against 
her enemy. What she was to gain by this attack on An¬ 
gela she did not definitely know; she did not reason how 
it was to help her; she turned upon Angela with in¬ 
stinctive animosity. Actually, she did not expect Joe 
to come to her for solace in his present despair. She 
knew that she must find a way to bring him to her. 
And as she told her subtle story, putting Angela in an 
equivocal position, she watched for her opportunity with 
Joe. She was intensely cautious, careful lest she allow 
herself to be hurried or take some false step. 

Her extreme caution increased her difficulties almost 
beyond solution. What was she going to do to bring 
this Joe, who was still suffering, no doubt, from his re¬ 
cent dismissal, into the regions of her amorous fasci¬ 
nation? Unexpectedly her brother Manuel came, without 
intention, to her aid. 

The spring was approaching; Manuel had saved some 
money and was planning his anticipated escape from 
the island. He had in him, as Rosie also had, a ca¬ 
pacity for bigger things than the conditions of the island 
provided, and he had besides, as against the normal hesi¬ 
tancies of a woman of Rosie’s education, a young man’s 
courage and the instinct to dominate. He had a great 
curiosity about the cities of the mainland—Boston, 
Chicago, New York—an intense desire to test them with 
his physical strength and his mental ability. 

Though he expected to work, he had determined that 

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j» AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
he should not be completely dependent upon the whims 
of the cities, that he should not approach them abjectly. 
He would go to them seeking, but with money in his 
pocket as a charm against the possible vicissitudes of 
their capriciousness. While he had no doubt of his 
ability to command them according to his needs and his 
desires, it might take a little time, he admitted to him¬ 
self; so he planned to go with two hundred and fifty 
dollars between him and any untoward conditions that 
he might encounter. 

He had decided to go to New York; the time had 
almost come; but he had not yet provided himself 
with a sufficient amount of money to leave him 
two hundred and fifty dollars after he had appro¬ 
priated various sums for clothes and other necessary 
expenses. 

“Got any money?” he asked Rosie one day. 

“Money? No,” she said. “What for?” 

He glanced at her with an amused smile. 

“It’s time for,me t’ be gettin’ out,” he said, “but Lm 
short o’ cash.” 

Rosie went about her work and said nothing. 

“You know I'm goin’, don’t you?” he asked. 

“When you goin’?” 

“Soon’s I can get enough money.” 

“It ain’t goin’ t’ help me none for you t' go,” she re¬ 
marked. “It’s on’y goin’ t' make it harder for me.” 

“I can’t help that.” 

“Well, I can’t help it either, if you ain’t got enough 
money.” 

“Look here, Rosie,” he said seriously, “you got t’ help 
me!” 


143 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 

“What d’you mean—I got to? Lm helpin’ you 
enough, I guess, keepin’ my mouth shut.” 

“That’s all right, but you got t’ help me more. You 
got money, an’ what d’you want it for? You can’t spend 
it here,” he sneered. 

“Huh!” she sneered back. “Spendin’ it ain’t havin’ it. 
I could spend it if I wanted. I’d rather keep it.” 

Manuel laughed genially. “What’s the good o’ keepin* 
it?” he asked. 

Rosie had a sudden memory. 

“There ain’t any use o’ keepin’ it,” she answered, “if 
it’ll get you somethin’ you want more, but what’s the 
good o’ givin’ it away for nothin’?” 

Manuel was amused. He saw the truth of her argu¬ 
ment, for he thought less of money himself just then than 
of a great many things that it would buy—especially 
the “good time” he intended to have; but he wanted 
money badly in order to secure those other things. He 
looked at his sister and asked, raising his eyebrows, “I 
ain’t got anythin’ you want more’n your money, have 
I, Rosie?” 

Rosie was silent for a minute, moving about her work 
with preoccupied nervousness. 

“Have I, Rosie?” Manuel asked again. 

She stopped and looked at him. 

“You want t’ get away,” she said at last, “where you 
can live different, don’t you?” 

“Yes,” he said, “an’ I’m goin’.” 

“Well, I want t’ live different too—jus’ as much as you 
do. I want—I want t’ get married an’ have a home o’ my 
own.” 

Manuel laughed good-naturedly. 

144 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 

“Go to it, Rosie!” he said. “I don’t blame you. It’s 
time. But you can’t marry me!” 

“No, an’ I don’t want to,” she retorted. 

“So you’re savin’ up your money for that, eh! Got 
the fellah picked out?” 

“Yes,” she admitted. 

“Good for you! Who is he?” 

“Listen, Manuel, where you goin’?” she asked with 
apparent irrelevancy. 

“N’York.” 

He gazed at her with renewed interest. Evidently she 
had something that she wanted to say. He watched her 
desire and her hesitation contending together. 

“You don’t know anythin’ about N’York,” she said. 

“Well, I’ll know all about it soon.” 

“Look,” she said. “I should think you’d want t’ find 
out somethin’ about it before you go.” 

“Huh?” 

“Santos’ Joe was in N’York.” 

“Oh!” he said quietly, nodding his head. “I see! 
Santos’ Joe! That’s a good idea, Rosie, both ways. I 
ought t’ get him over to the house, eh, t’ talk about 
N’York?” 

“Why not? He could tell you lots.” 

Manuel laughed agreeably, and approaching his sister, 
he patted her on the shoulder. 

“I wish you luck, Rosie. I sure wish you luck! But,” 
he asked, still patting her shoulder, “what’s that got t’ 
do with me gettin’ some money?” 

Rosie looked up into his face. Then she turned her 
head away with a nod of consent. “How much?” she 
asked. 


145 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

Manuel smiled. “How much will you say?” 

Rosie shook her head vigorously. “How much?” she 
repeated. 

“How much will you say?” Manuel again asked 
quietly. 

“Twenty dollars.” 

“Oh, Rosie! Make it thirty!” 

She shook her head. “Twenty,” she said. 

He stopped patting her shoulder. “Make it thirty,” 
he demanded. 

“Twenty-five!” she conceded. 

“He ought t’ be worth . . .” 

“Twenty-five!” she interrupted. “No more.” 

Manuel laughed. “All right,” he said, “I’ll see what 
I can do with your friend.” 

“My friend! I don’t know him! I don’t know him, 
Manuel.” 

“No? How d’you know you want him, then?” 

“I know,” she said. 

“Well, you’ll have t’ give him a drink when he comes.” 

Rosie nodded. 

“An’ you better think up some things t’ ask him ’bout 
N’York,” he suggested. 

Rosie tossed her head. “Bring him!” she said. 

“I’d do more’n that for twenty-five dollars—for you, 
Rosie.” 

He went out, laughing as he went, and Rosie heard 
him go whistling across the yard. 

Then she waited. 

It was entirely true that for twenty-five dollars Man¬ 
uel would do more than she had asked. He was ordi¬ 
narily a cool, clear-headed young man, but his escape 
146 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
to the city had become a mania. There was no sign of 
a maniac about him, however, as he approached Joe. 
So suave was his invitation, so keen were his interest and 
his anticipation, Joe fell at once into a co-operative mood 
and agreed to call at the Rosario house that night. 

When he arrived Manuel greeted him with expansive 
friendliness. They sat down in the kitchen and began 
to talk. Joe had brought along an old creased map of 
New York, which he spread on the kitchen table. Very 
soon Rosie came in, and Manuel rose to the occasion. 

“D’you know my sister Rosie, Joe?” 

Joe stood up, smiling, his eyes fixed on Rosie’s. 

“I’ve seen her before,” he said; then to Rosie, “Glad 
t’ meet you.” 

Rosie smiled gaily. “I’m cornin’ in t’ hear about 
N’York,” she said. 

“Say, listen, Rosie,” Manuel remarked, “Joe could 
talk better if he had somethin’ t’ drink.” 

“You like some wine?” she said brightly to Joe. 

“Sure,” he said, laughing. “I don’t mind.” 

Rosie brought a bottle of wine and filled the tumblers. 
Joe spread out his map so that Broadway ran on, block 
after block, across the table, till it finally ended abruptly 
against the Rosario kitchen wall. Joe talked; on one 
side of him sat Rosie, tremulous, and on the other side 
sat her brother, watching her covertly with amused in¬ 
terest, and wishing that he could earn twenty-five dol¬ 
lars as easily as this every day. 

Joe showed them on the map the wharf at which 
Manuel’s steamer would tie up, indicated elevated and 
subway lines, led his listeners a short distance up Broad¬ 
way, pointing out the City Hall, the Woolworth Tower, 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

14th and 23rd Streets as he went, mentioned the Met¬ 
ropolitan Tower; but most intimately, for Manuel’s 
specific information, he showed them the wide length 
of Canal Street and associated thoroughfares—Thompson, 
Grand, Desbrosses—and a certain spacious West Side 
square, bleak and deserted on Sundays, where he and his 
gang used to shoot craps. 

"I guess maybe you’ll find ’em there yet,” Joe said. 
“But maybe not Things change faster in N’York than 
they do on the island.” 

Then he went on to lead them through the intricacies 
of the East Side—the Bowery and Chinatown—showed 
them where the Chambers Street bus line ran under the 
great arches of the Municipal Building, indicated the 
Navy Yard across a narrow strip of water, marked where 
the great bridges ran to their foundations. Then he sud¬ 
denly shifted back to the busy river between Manhattan 
and New Jersey—its ferries, the transatlantic liners 
moving majestically up and down, the exciting hurry of 
its congested traffic, the sparkle and exhilaration of 
its sunlit expanses. He mentioned the sky-line of the 
city that he had watched so many times as it emerged 
or faded behind banks of fog or mist, and he pointed out 
where, dimly seen, the Goddess of Liberty stood with her 
high-held torch. 

Before Joe had talked many minutes, Manuel’s in¬ 
terest in these previsions of the field of his coming ad¬ 
ventures put Rosie out of his mind. He forgot to watch 
her. And she, absorbing from Joe something of the 
glamour of the metropolis, was constantly aware of Joe 
himself. When he rose at last to go he stood trans- 
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# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
figured for her in the reflected dazzling brightness of 
New York. 

Joe bade them good night, Rosie asked him to come 
again; and Manuel, wakened from the daze of his im¬ 
aginings, took his guest by the hand. 

"Come again,” he said. "Great stuff! I could listen 
t’ you talk about N’York all night.” 

When Joe had gone, Rosie asked, "You’re glad he came, 
eh, Manuel?” 

"You bet!” he said. "He’s got me all excited. Oh, 
Rosie, I’m for N’York! When do I get my twenty-five?” 

She waved her hand. "He knows N’York, all right,” 
she said. "I’d like t’ hear him talk again.” 

Manuel nodded. "I’ll bring him,” he promised. 
"Rosie, you’re all right.” 

A week later, proving to be as good as his word, Man¬ 
uel again brought Joe to the house, and again the three 
of them went up and down Broadway on the map, found 
Washington Square, took a green bus up Fifth Avenue, 
tramped through Central Park, and viewed the Hudson 
from Grant’s Tomb. They wandered here and there 
on the East Side and the West Side, visited the Aquarium, 
and watched the crowds about the Battery. 

But when, still later, Joe called at the Rosario house 
for the third time, he went of his own volition. 


149 


* XVII ^8 


During these weeks Giorgio Vinti was the busiest man 
on the island. He had made several trips to Providence 
for the purpose of purchasing gear, had arranged with 
the Island Transportation people for additional storage 
space in their warehouse, had purchased a horse and a 
small Ford truck, had had his telephone connected up, had 
induced as many men among his neighbours as he could 
to go to work for him, and had set them at the task of 
preparing his old gear for the season’s work. His dories 
came out of the shed; the beach and waters were busy 
with his extensive energies. Three traps were set out 
early, and he had buoys and markings already placed 
for seven others. He had hired half a dozen men from 
the mainland to come down and work for him for the 
summer. Promptly after the first of April, when the 
additional men arrived, he got his lobster pots into the 
water, started the construction of his fish-pound, and 
rushed the laying of his other traps. 

In the midst of all this work, early in April, one of the 
fishing-steamers of the Trust nosed its way up the bay. 
It stood off, drifting, steaming slowly up and down, and 
sent out half a dozen dories to make experimental catches. 
The dories were out on three different days, and the 
excitement of Giorgio and his men rose to fever pitch. 
They worked like mad at their job, watching these in- 
150 


& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
truders meanwhile with the interest of enmity. Then 
the Trust’s boat drew in its dories and quietly steamed 
away, leaving Vinti’s men in a state of relaxation, feeling 
like victors who had won a fight. But Vinti knew that 
they had won nothing. 

During these weeks, too, Giorgio had been bothered 
about the new house. Mr. Grania had reminded him 
about the new house, and in spite of the pressing threat 
of the Fish Trust, Giorgio had agreed to start things 
at once. He had called upon Angela for help, but he 
found her incapable of grasping his idea of the new 
structure; she had no experience of what a fine house 
should be like, and she seemed to have neither imag¬ 
ination nor desires regarding her future abode. In 
desperation Giorgio had called upon an architect to pre¬ 
pare a tentative plan; and as this was an unheard-of thing 
at the Fist, he finally felt that his house had actually been 
started right. 

But mostly he was worried about his marriage. That 
was the thing which, if he could have had his way, he 
would have attended to first. But he was not allowed to 
have his way. Father Pasquale declared that it would 
be unseemly to hurry, so soon after Mrs. Grania’s death; 
Mr. Grania said that his wife would have wanted the 
new house started first; Angela quietly begged for time. 

In spite of all his hard work and his irritations, Giorgio 
was as kind and gentle with Angela as a man could te. 
He was frequently at the Grania house for a while in 
the evenings, he brought gifts for the girl whenever he 
returned from the mainland, and once he took her to 
Providence with him, that she might shop for her wed¬ 
ding in the great stores. It was on that day that he 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
bought her the small, clear diamond set in a ring. 

They stood together before the long glass case in the 
jeweller’s shop, and Angela, with many hesitations, se¬ 
lected a ring from the pair of trays presented for their 
examination. Giorgio had told her, with a large air, 
to choose; and she, embarrassed, chose one that was really 
not quite so large as she would have liked. She was 
bewildered about the probable price of these points of 
colour that gleamed delightfully, and she did not dare 
to choose according to her real desire. But it happened 
that the one she chose was a flawless small stone of good 
colour and cutting. 

Angela pointed to it. The clerk courteously measured 
her finger, and then he measured the ring. Miraculously, 
it fitted. Giorgio took it from the clerk’s large white 
hand and slipped it on to Angela’s slim finger. Then he 
held her hand up before him and looked at the gem. 

"There!” he exclaimed. "It looks better there than 
in the case, eh?” 

The sparkling beauty of the stone drew a smile to 
Angela’s lips, and Giorgio, seeing that she was pleased, 
seeing that she smiled, turned to the salesman and asked, 
"How much?” 

Angela’s smile died at the man’s reply; it was an un¬ 
believable figure. But Giorgio, undaunted, brought his 
thick pocket-book out from an inner pocket, and counted 
out the necessary number of bills. 

“You ought to have a guard for that ring,” the sales¬ 
man suggested. "Though small, it’s a very good stone.” 

Giorgio bought the guard. Then he led the way, pom¬ 
pous but smiling, toward the door of the great shop, 
where the small boy in a grey uniform with black frogs 
152 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
and brass buttons, opened the door with his usual def¬ 
erence for their exit. 

Just outside, Giorgio stopped. 

“You like it, eh, Angela—the ring?” 

“Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s lovely.” 

“Then be happy, an’ smile for me sometimes.” 

She was happy and she smiled—smiled up into 
Giorgio’s face. 

“Look!” he said in Portuguese. “Look! The stone 
is bright, eh?” He took her hand as he spoke, and held 
it. “Yes, it is bright. Like my love, Angela—bright! 
But the size—bah! That is not like my love for you, 
child. It is too little to be like my love. My love is 
bright and big.” 

He kept his eyes on Angela as he spoke. She blushed 
under his look. She sensed sincerity in his voice, and 
when he had finished she said, “You’re good t’ me, 
Giorgio. I ain’t worth so much.” 

“You’re worth all I got,” he said. Then he squeezed 
her hand and turned away, and they walked down the 
street together. 

Giorgio’s ample generosity, his apparent clear intent 
to perform all that he had agreed, had the effect, finally, 
of advancing the time of his wedding. With Father Pas- 
quale his exemplary conduct began to tip the scales. He 
came to see that the satisfaction of Giorgio’s honourable 
desires was not incompatible with a sympathetic remem¬ 
brance of Mrs. Grania. The little priest felt, moreover, 
that a man like Giorgio would be better married, and 
that he needed now, in all his hard work and worry, 
whatever comfort and encouragement he could gather 
from the married state. Consequently, he at last sup- 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
ported Giorgio in his contention for a marriage in May 
instead of in June. 

Mr. Grania still kept his eye on the new house. The 
foundation was already under construction, and by the 
time of the marriage, with good luck and good weather, 
the building would have acquired the outlines of a dwell¬ 
ing. He believed that his wife would have been content 
with the progress of things, and he finally gave his con¬ 
sent. 

Angela had, for a time, been won by Giorgio’s gen¬ 
erosity and affectionate kindness, but there were still 
moments when she was swept by great waves of re¬ 
vulsion, moments when Giorgio’s chain about her neck 
was a scourging reminder of a loathsome penance to be 
done. But always the ring upon her finger gleamed in 
the likeness of an accusing eye, and she began to feel 
ashamed of her desire for delay as a guilty evasion of 
her vow. 

She had, too, become afraid, for the women of the 
community had shown her their hatred. They were 
jealous of her, and Rosie’s quiet remarks had given them 
a peg on which to hang their hatred. Again and again 
married women had refused to speak to her, had passed 
her with averted eyes, or with deliberate stares and sneers. 
At first Angela did not believe her senses, but several 
repetitions forced her to realize that the community was 
against her. She was under the cloud of one of those 
mob prejudices which spring up in every community 
from time to time. Without understanding it, Angela 
felt it, and gradually she, who had been so gay, so care¬ 
free, so beautifully lacking in self-consciousness, be¬ 
came conscious and afraid, withdrew more and more 
154 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
from the sight of her neighbours, and hid within her¬ 
self. 

It happened one day that, with all her problems press¬ 
ing upon her, she had to get out of doors; the house was 
intolerable. She needed to breathe deeply, to see far, 
somehow to grasp God again in the sun and the wind, 
to feel His strength about her. 

She went out and walked quickly, filled with a false 
awareness of sneering eyes upon her, down the road that 
ran out across the marshes. There was a light wind, 
chill but not keen, and the sunlight fell genially. Far 
away toward Melton the curve of one small hill lay like 
a jewel against the blue sky—a jewel greener and more 
luminous than any emerald—where early oats were grow¬ 
ing. On both sides of her road the broken, withered 
stalks of last year's reeds stood stiff in the wind, but 
under them the shoots of new green reeds were visible. A 
pair of early red-wings called mournfully to each other 
across the marsh. Angela stood looking at the near bird 
as he balanced on his slender stalk, heard his call, and 
heard his hidden comrade answer. From these sights 
and sounds she gathered a mildly joyful assurance, 
gently moved by the incomprehensible mystery of the 
spring. 

She went on beyond the marshes and mounted a little 
hillock. The low hill far away glowed more richly green 
in the slanting sunlight; but at last she turned her back 
upon it, and faced the settlement and her home. The 
plane of the Fist rose before her, blotched here and there 
with dark-brown rectangles of ploughed land. She could 
see the first scantlings of the new house which was to be 
her home standing stark against the sky. 

155 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 

She stood and drank deep breaths of the passing wind, 
feeling the spring in her body, feeling it too, subtly, in 
some deep chamber of her being. She was emotionally 
moved, at once gay and sad, touched with 1 nameless 
hope, conscious of the drabness in her life. 

At last she descended the little hillock and started to 
walk back through the marshland. The red-wing she had 
seen was gone, but from some hidden place among the 
reeds his comrade still called mournfully, insistently. 
She paused to listen to that doleful note, and as she 
stood she saw a group of children approaching along the 
road, homeward-bound from the little yellow schoolhouse 
two miles away toward Melton. She watched them come 
on—eight or ten boys and girls eleven or twelve 
years old, attired in a heterogeneous collection of hats and 
garments. Soon Angela started on again, pacing slowly. 
She hoped that the children would pass her, for she 
wanted to be alone in her serenely melancholy mood. 
But they did not pass. As they approached they 
slackened their pace, so that they were, in effect, follow¬ 
ing her, and she soon became aware of their talk, became 
aware that they were talking about her. 

“It is, too, Angela Grania!” one exclaimed. 

There was silence for a moment after that, and Angela 
could feel their eyes passing all over her body, boring 
into her. 

“She’ goin’ t’ marry Giorgio Vinti,” said another. 

A titter passed among the children, for Giorgio was a 
by-word in the community, and these youngsters were 
expressing impressions gathered from their elders. 

“My mother says she’s awful lucky t’ marry him. He’s 
awful rich!” a little girl stated. 

156 


£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

“My mother says she's a fool t’ marry an ol' man/' 
a boy countered. 

“My mother says if she marries him she’ll be as bad as 
he is/’ another little girl contributed. 

“My mother says it’s a sin t’ marry anyone for money. 
She says Father Pasquale ought t’ be ashamed to do it!’’ 

The childish phrases stabbed into Angela’s conscious¬ 
ness. She was indignant, but with a nervous indignation 
that made her afraid, not bold. She quickened her pace 
in an attempt to escape; but the children, sensing her 
intention, quickened their pace also, and followed her at 
a convenient distance. 

“Huh! Father Pasquale can’t help marryin’ ’em. 
He’s got t’ marry ’em,’’ a big boy declared. 

“He has not!’’ a little girl contradicted positively. 
“He don’t have t’ marry people if he don’t want to.’’ 

“Uh, well, he’s got t’ marry them, ’cause she promised 
her mother t’ marry Vinti.’’ 

“She killed her mother so’s she could marry him.” 

“I should think she’d be arrested, if she did that!” 

“She did not kill her mother!” 

“She did too!” declared the positive feminine voice. 
“Her mother was buried just a little while ago, ’cause my 
mother went t’ the funeral!” 

“Giorgio Vinti was at the funeral.” 

Angela had been gradually speeding her progress to¬ 
ward home until at last she was hurrying along in a 
fever of agitation and fear—fear of the sound of those 
pursuing voices and the things they said. The children 
perceived her hurry, sensed that she was a victim, and 
with the deliberate cruelty of youth they followed hot on 
the trail of their quarry. 


157 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 

The biggest boy called after her at last, “Hey, Missis, 
what's your hurry?" and the others laughed at the un¬ 
mistakable response of Angela’s nerves as her head moved 
sidewise in an involuntary twitch. 

“We ain’t goin’ t’ hurt you!’’ another lad cried; and 
a mild-eyed little girl called, “What made y’ kill your 
mother?’’ 

They had not yet found a slogan to suit them; but soon 
they found it—the phrase with the most cruel barb, the 
phrase that denied her every decency in this marriage 
with Giorgio: “She’s marryin’ him for his money! 
Shame! Shame!’’ 

They called it after her, first one and then another, 
till, in a minute, they were crying it in chorus, and 
dancing, skipping along close behind her in their glee, 
like a pack of eager, baying hounds in sight of the kill. 
So keen was their sense of rhythm they unconsciously 
chanted: 


"Marryin’ him f’r his monee! 

Shayum! Shayum! 

Marryin’ him f’r his monee! 

Shayum! Shayum!” 

It was more than Angela could bear. This was what 
her neighbours thought of her sacrifice! She walked as 
fast as she was able, the swinging chorus close behind 
her; and then, at last, she ran. Hatred, intense and bitter, 
filled her soul. If she could, she would have annihilated 
every child in that hunting-pack, regardless of whose 
whelps they might be. But she was incapable of touch¬ 
ing them, incapable even of facing them. 

At last she reached the steps of her house. With shak- 

158 


£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
ing, terribly slow fingers she fumbled the key in the lock 
of the front door, while the children stood in a semi¬ 
circle below her and chanted their hunting-cry: 

“Marryin' him fr his monee! 

Shayum! Shayum!” 

Three or four women gathered in the road gazed at the 
demonstration with apparent enjoyment, while others 
came to windows and looked on with amused smiles. To 
Angela it seemed that the entire community stood jeering 
at her and at her betrothal. 

At last the key eased in the lock; Angela sprang into 
the house, slammed the door behind her, and leaned 
against it, trembling. The rhythmic cry still sounded 
outside. Suddenly a large stone struck the door with a 
crash that made her jump and filled her with new fear. 
She waited breathless to see what would follow that, 
filled with terror before the hovering cruelty. But soon 
the chorus ceased in a scatter of laughter, and she heard 
the sounds of receding steps. 

She stood and leaned against the door, too worn out 
to move. The house was quiet as a tomb. Out of doors 
all sounds seemed to have ceased with the ending of that 
hunting-cry. It continued to ring in her ears, and though 
her fear subsided, shame still moved in her sharply. She 
gazed into the dark emptiness of the little hall and lis¬ 
tened to the echo of that awful children’s chorus, which 
was the voice of their elders' accusation. She clasped 
her hands over her bosom to still its agitation, to save 
herself from collapse; then, suddenly, she threw her arms 
wide and cried in a voice that rang through the empty 
house with the anguish of a damned consciousness: 

159 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 

*‘1 do love him! I do love him!" 

But the declaration brought no relief. Listening to the 
echoes of that agonized cry, she knew in her heart that 
it had been a lie. 

No, she did not love Giorgio. But her mother had said 
that love is not necessary in marriage. That didn’t mat¬ 
ter now, of course, for in any case Angela could not go 
back over the way she had come. There was her vow, 
standing in the clear image of her mother, to prevent her 
passage along that backward path. Certainly she could 
not go back; yet her present situation was intolerable. 
She needed support, protection; only by going forward on 
the path she was in could she attain them. By going 
swiftly she could attain them sooner. 

She went into the room at the front of the house, 
fell on her knees by the horse-hair sofa that occupied 
the place where her mother’s coffin had stood, and bow¬ 
ing her head in a final surrender to the conditions of her 
life, she wept. 


160 


* XVIII ^ 


Thus it was finally agreed by all parties concerned that 
the marriage ceremony of Giorgio and Angela should be 
performed on the second Sunday in May, and so it was 
that the banns were published by Father Pasquale for 
the first time at mass on the last Sunday in April. There 
was a deep silence in the little chapel as the priest read 
the names from the altar—Giorgio Pedro Vinti and 
Angela Maria Grania—the tense silence of interest in a 
climactic event. 

Joe attended the mass. At the sound of those names 
a chill sensation crept over his body, like the crawling of 
a swarm of insects. For a moment his head whirled; 
countless emotions cried in him simultaneously for ex¬ 
pression—fear, hate, love, despair, protection for himself 
and for Angela. In that first emotional assault he al¬ 
most gave voice to an elemental protest; but he controlled 
himself, clenched his fists, and held his peace. Tears 
stood in his eyes—tears of desperation and impotence; 
so far had civilization mastered him. 

Then, during the mass, during the morning and after 
dinner, his thoughts whirled. He seemed to have waked 
suddenly out of a trance. His previous conclusion to 
let Angela’s decision be his law seemed to him now fool¬ 
ish, impossible, mad. Had he actually been crazy? he 
wondered. God! What ailed him? He was losing her! 

161 


j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 
A little while and she’d be gone beyond anything he could 
do. He must save her—now! He must save her from 
Vinti—must save her for himself! 

As he thought of Vinti, all Joe’s faculties focused into 
hatred of the older man. He would have liked to go to 
Giorgio and maul him with his hands—beat and strangle 
and mutilate him. But there was in his mind a measure 
of cupidity that demanded his own safety. He saw that 
to be caught red-handed in the killing of Vinti was to 
lose Angela; and though he could have stood that if he 
could thus save her from the other man, the very thought 
of being caught suggested the thought of his failure. If 
he failed, Vinti might still have her, while he would him¬ 
self be placed beyond hearing any cry for help that she 
might utter. Moreover, his cupidity whispered that there 
was a safe way—a safe way—if he could only find it. 

Out of all his wild thoughts, imaginings and contriv- 
ings the safe way seemed to emerge at last, and on that 
afternoon he made his third visit to the Rosario house. 

Rosie, very attractive in her new red dress, admitted 
him with a smile. At once, on shutting the door, she 
came close to him and whispered, “Don’t say anythin’ 
about Manuel goin’ away. My father’s home.”' Joe 
nodded his understanding, and she went at once to call 
her brother, who was supposed to be sleeping, but who 
was actually preparing his things for departure. Manuel 
was on the eve of leaving for New York. 

Rosie returned at once and talked with Joe, but soon 
her brother came in from his room, and Joe stood up. 

“Hello,” he said. “I want t’ talk with you, Manuel. 
Can you go out with me for a while?” 

“Sure!” Manuel turned at once to get his hat. 

162 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE & 

"You don’t mind me takin’ your brother away?” Joe 
asked Rosie, with a smile. 

“No,” she said, smiling in response. “I guess you won’t 
do him no harm.” 

Out of doors the two young men walked a short distance 
in silence, and then Joe said, “See here, Manuel, I want 
you t’ do somethin’ for me in N’York.” 

“All right, Joe. What is it?” 

“I want you t’ send me a gun.” 

As he spoke Joe watched Manuel narrowly, but the 
lad took his statement calmly enough. 

“What kind of a gun?” he asked. 

“A shootin’-gun—a revolver. Not too big a one, but 
a good one. It don’t need t’ be a new one, but it’s got t’ 
work right. You can get it over on the Bowery, at a 
pawnshop, an’ you won’t have t’ pay much.” 

Manuel nodded. “How much you want t’ pay, Joe?” 

Joe took a bill out of his pocket. “Here,” he said. 
“Here’s ten dollars. Buy me a good gun, an’ send it t’ 
me, an’ keep the change.” 

Manuel took the money. “All right,” he said. 

“But look, Manuel, I don’t know how I’m goin’ t’ 
get it. I don’t want anyone t’ know I got it. I don’t 
want it t’ come t’ me at Santos’, ’cause they’d want t’ 
know what it was, an’ I don’t want anyone t’ know I 
got it.” 

“Well,” Manuel suggested smoothly, after a moment, 
“that’s all right. I c’n send it t’ Rosie. I won’t tell 
her what it is. I’ll tell her I’m goin’t’ send her a pack¬ 
age, an’ it’s for you, an’ she needn’t open it. You c’n 
come over t’ our house an’ get it.” 

“She’ll be suspicious, won’t she?” 

163 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

Manuel laughed. “She won’t be suspicious o' you,” he 
said. Then, more seriously, he added, “Rosie likes you, 
Joe. You let me manage it with Rosie. All you got t’ 
do is come an’ see Rosie in a few days an’ get your gun.” 
Mentally he made a note that certainly Rosie ought to 
pay for such service as this. 

“Well . . .” Joe agreed. “Remember, Manuel, it’s got 
t’ be a gun that’ll work. Don’t try t’ make too much 
money for yourself out o’ that ten dollars. An’ look! 
Do it up so’s it won’t look like a gun.” 

“Don’t you worry, Joe,” Manuel said. “I’ll send you 
a gun, an’ I’ll fix it so’s you’ll get it all right. No¬ 
body’ll know anythin’ about it.” 

Joe nodded. “Send it right away,” he urged. 

They walked back to the settlement together. At the 
Rosario house Joe bade Manuel good-bye and good luck, 
and returned to do the evening milking. 

Joe’s visit to the Rosario house was another drop of 
bitterness in Angela’s bitter cup. She saw him knock 
at the door to-day, and saw Rosie admit him smiling, 
in her new red dress. At once Angela’s heart was filled 
with a dull sense of loss. The figure of Joe had seemed, 
as he passed before her house, a thing of wonder. The 
youth himself, and his love, were worth more than all 
the world; yet she had held them in her hand and had let 
them go—had thrown them away. She couldn’t help 
doing so, of course; but now Rosie Rosario had picked 
them up and taken them for her own. 

Yet Joe’s visit to the Rosario house that Sunday after¬ 
noon was not so gratifying to Rosie as Angela supposed, 
for she saw clearly that Joe had no interest in her. Her 
164 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE je 
yearning had become intense, had increased and grown 
with feeding on thoughts of Joe, and had become more 
famished as it thus developed, like the craving of a 
person addicted to the use of a drug. Yet what her 
yearning had to feed upon was nothing more than the 
most casual items of intercourse. Rosie would have con¬ 
sidered the twenty-five dollars she had given Manuel 
an absolute waste but for the fact that, at the last moment 
before his departure, her brother had told her of the pack¬ 
age that would come for Joe. 

With that to count upon, there was still a chance for 
her, and with a sudden eagerness of anticipation she 
gave Manuel another ten dollars. Joe would come again! 
Manuel had refused to tell her what the package was to 
contain; but she was serenely careless as to that. 

When the package arrived—promptly, as Manuel had 
promised—Rosie was, however, naturally inquisitive 
about its contents. It was a box the size of a shoe-box, 
carefully wrapped in heavy paper, and tied with the 
innumerable knots that a novice in doing up bundles 
always ties. 

Rosie examined the direction carefully, computed the 
value of the postage stamps upon the wrapper, turned 
it this way and that, shook it and heard a light re¬ 
sponsive rattle within, gazed again at the direction and at 
the blurred rubber-stampings of the post office. Then 
she laid it on the kitchen table and went about her duties. 
But her eyes roved back to it from time to time, and at 
last, when her work was finished, she took the package 
from the table and went to her room. There, with her 
scissors, she carefully loosened every intricate knot in turn, 
laid aside the enfolding paper, removed the cover from 
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the box, and exposed to view a quantity of excelsior. 
When she lifted this mass a thick layer came away, re¬ 
vealing more excelsior beneath. She bored into this, 
feeling with her fingers, until she touched another layer 
of paper wrapped about a hard object. She let her fingers 
wander over this object without removing it from the 
box—let them wander along it, for it was long—a strange 
shape. 

Suddenly she knew what it was. Her heart stood still 
and the blood went cold in her veins. She was not afraid 
of the revolver itself; nevertheless she was overwhelmed 
with terror. She understood at once, intuitively, what 
Joe wanted a revolver for, perceiving his purpose in a 
flash of intelligence. 

The brightness of that flash of intelligence revealed 
to her not only Joe's intent, but the significance of it. 
For a moment she hated him with the bitterness of one 
who realizes that he has been fooled, duped. She was 
angry with him and with Manuel; ashamed of Manuel's 
simplicity and her own. This Joe was going to kill Vinti. 
Well, she didn’t so much mind that; but why was he go¬ 
ing to kill him? For Angela's sake—to save Angela— 
because he still loved Angela! And here he was, using 
Manuel, using her for that! Rosie’s face was red and 
her eyes were bright with anger. 

But she soon became calm and smiled to herself. She 
replaced the excelsior in the box, wrapped and tied the 
package carefully, and hid it away under some garments 
in a bureau drawer. Then she took off her dress and 
let down her hair. 

Her hair was long and beautiful, and she stood before 
her mirror for many minutes, in her underwaist and pet- 
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ticoat, combing it, brushing it to richer dark lustres. Her 
firm arms moved with wide grace, unconsciously free and 
strong, and as her hair grew smoother, more polished 
under her hands, she communed silently with her reflec¬ 
tion in the mirror. 

Apparently this man she had chosen and paid for was 
not to be so easily acquired; she was destined to fail 
here as she had failed with Vinti; she had gone to greater 
expense to suffer a greater loss. And there was Angela, 
loving the one and marrying the other of these men whom 
Rosie had chosen—holding them both and using neither 
according to his deserts. The unfairness of that was 
maddening. If Rosie could have taken Angela’s place, 
she would have been thrilled with a great joy and would 
have thanked Heaven on her knees; then she would have 
selected the man she wanted, with deliberate intelligence, 
and would have dismissed the other to find his alternative 
way. She accepted Angela’s inability to do likewise as 
the measure of her stupidity. Rosie could see no reason 
for allowing Angela’s stupidity to mar her life, and she 
decided upon a course of action to prevent that casualty. 
She would have liked to have Giorgio and his money; 
but that was impossible—he had said so, and had given 
proof that he meant what he said. Moreover, he had 
now gone so far with Angela that there was no likelihood 
of anything upsetting their plans—unless Joe should re¬ 
ceive his revolver. 

That was not likely. 

Rosie looked straight into the face before her; in those 
eyes a look of serene assurance settled, and the full lips 
relaxed into a mild ironic smile. 

No, it was not likely that Joe would receive his pack- 

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age. For to allow Vinti to die would be equivalent to 
flinging Angela into Joe’s arms. 

Rosie rolled the dark mass of her hair into coils upon 
her head, pinned, touched and patted it for delicate little 
effects of contour and sheen, and stood looking into the 
mirror in a glow of satisfied appreciation. The face op¬ 
posite smiled kindly now, and Rosie felt the brilliant 
charm of that genial presence. 

‘‘No, it ain’t likely, eh, that Joe’ll ever get his bundle?” 
Rosie asked audibly of the smiling person in the mirror. 

There was an answering gesture of firm bare arms. 

“It never came. Manuel’ll have t’ stand the blame 
for that!” the smiling person said. 

Rosie nodded. She turned and put on her new red 
dress, shook and drew it into place. Then she stood and 
looked at the reflection seriously for a minute, but a 
sense of achievement swelled in her throat and she could 
not long be serious in the presence of that charming lady 
opposite. She smiled, watching the smiling response of 
the other, and then she laughed a little happy laugh. 

“What else?” she asked serenely, raising her eyebrows. 

But the lady in the mirror shook her head. “I guess 
you’ll do,” she answered. 

In truth, Rosie looked as though she might “do.” The 
red dress was the unifying touch in a picture which, for 
the last half-hour, had been slowly growing toward 
artistic perfection. Now all the brilliances were harmon¬ 
ized into something that very closely approximated 
beauty. Rosie was brilliant, for it was the spring and 
she was in love—she was amorous. To feel Joe’s arms 
about her, to feel his lips voluntarily upon her face— 
on her lips, her eyes, her throat (she could feel them in 
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imagination, and her bosom swelled to that self-inflicted 
pain)—she would have given anything. 

So it was not likely that Joe would receive his package. 

It was Wednesday. In the evening, after it was dark, 
Joe called at the Rosario house for his package. Rosie 
opened the door, and before he could speak she greeted 
him. “Oh, hello!” she said quickly. “Come in!” 

Joe went in and she placed a chair for him. 

“Sit down,” she said. “I’m glad t’ see you. The house 
is awful lonesome since Manuel went. My father's never 
home; you know, he's workin’ for Vinti.” 

“Don't he ever get home?” Joe asked. 

“Oh, sometimes. But he ain’t reg’lar. Vinti keeps 
’em chasin’ the tides.” 

“You ought t’ get married, if you’re lonesome,” he 
suggested. 

Rosie cast a quick glance at him, but his eyes did not 
express what she had hoped; so she threw out her hands 
in a gesture, and shrugged. “It ain’t leap year,” she said. 

“You don’t have t’ wait for leap year,” he remarked 
with conviction. “I guess the trouble is you got too many 
fellahs, eh?” 

Rosie looked at him again, puzzled. Did he believe 
what he said, or had he read her desire and made haste 
to evade it, or was he trying to find out whether or not 
there was a chance for him? She couldn’t tell. 

“Listen!’ she said. “Men are afraid o’ women.” 

Rosie was perfectly serious, but Joe laughed out. 

“I never see one I was afraid of,” he said. 

“No? You ain’t married, though. You never see one 
you’d of been afraid t’ marry?” 

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Joe didn't see what there was to be afraid of. 

“Well, Lve seen some I wouldn’t of wanted t’ marry/' 

“That’s it!” she said. “What happened t’ them?” 

Joe laughed. “I do’ know,” he said. “Somebody mar¬ 
ried 'em, I guess.” 

“Yuh. They had t' wait till somebody come along 
that wasn’t afraid.” 

“Sure!” 

“Yuh. That’s why they have leap year!” 

“Well, you don’t have t’ wait till leap year.” 

Rosie looked at him again; Joe’s face showed no sign 
of anything more than a casual interest—not in her, but 
in the discussion. He was “jollying,” “kidding.” But 
Rosie’s agitation increased as he touched that tender spot 
of her desire—without perceiving that he was touching a 
tender spot, without caring. 

“Well, I’m waitin’—for leap year or somethin',” she 
said. 

Joe at once caught a clear impression of Rosie. He 
knew her type, he thought—worsen who become hunters 
instead of the hunted. Ordinarily he would have re¬ 
sponded to the intensity of her sensed desire; but now 
all women were insignificant before his devotion to 
Angela. He at once, with a kind of distaste, withdrew 
from the deep waters into which the conversation had 
been led. 

“Did Manuel send my bundle yet?” he asked. 

Rosie shook her head. “I ain’t heard from him,” she 
answered. She felt that Joe did not want her, yet she 
could not bring herself to let him go. She was desper¬ 
ately eager to win him. 

“You didn’t get no package?” he asked. 

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“No,” she said evenly. “He told me about it, but it 
ain’t come yet.” 

She rose as she spoke and went to get a bottle of wine. 
She filled the tumblers and Joe remarked, “I hope he 
don’t forget t’ send it!” 

“He won’t,” she assured him. “Maybe he had t’ hunt 
t’ find one that’ll suit you.” 

“Huh?” Joe asked abruptly. 

“He may have t’ hunt for what he’s buyin’ you.” 

Joe nodded. “You know what it is?” he asked mildly. 
He gave her a suspicious keen glance. 

“No. He wouldn’t tell me. But I want t’ know.” 

Joe shook his head. “I can’t tell you. I wondered if 
Manuel told you.” 

“No. I asked him, but he wouldn’t. That makes me 
want t’ know all the more.” She was perfectly frank. 

“You forget it!” Joe laughed. 

“I think I can guess what it is,” she proposed. 

“Yuh?” 

“I guess it’s a weddin’-gift, eh?” 

“Weddin’-gift?” 

“Sure!” 

“Weddin’-gift!” Joe repeated. 

“Sure! Vinti’s goin' t’ marry Angela Grania—you 
know!” 

Joe nodded. “No,” he said, “it ain’t a weddin’-gift— 
exactly.” 

“I didn’t know but it might be.” 

Joe smiled bitterly. “It might be, but it ain’t.” 

“Well . . she said, dismissing the matter. 

Joe finished his wine. Then, without warning, he rose 
suddenly, noisily, with anger in his face. 

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ji AN ISLAND CHRONICLE s 

“Say!" he cried, “why don’t that brother o’ yours send 
me my bundle?" 

There was an appearance of wildness about him. 
Rosie, startled and alarmed at his vehemence, jumped to 
her feet. 

“What’s the matter?" she cried. She went over to Joe 
and took him by the arm. “What’s the matter?" 

Rosie was upset, nervous, anxious. She had been on 
edge to lead Joe to notice her appearance, her person; 
she had been ready to lead him as far as he would go in 
that direction; but she could not be sure whether she had 
done well or ill in their conversation; she had deliberately 
lied about the package, had stumbled once in regard 
to her knowledge of what it was to contain, had made a 
mistake in mentioning the wedding-gift. His sudden 
burst of passion made her jump. She was confused and 
vaguely terrified. 

“What’s the matter?" she cried. “What’s the matter?" 

Her hands were moving convulsively on his sleeve. 

Joe, suddenly quieted, stood absorbed in his thoughts. 
He made no reply to her repeated question. But at last 
he placed a brown hand over one of hers and let it rest 
there. 

At this action a sudden peace descended upon Rosie. It 
seemed to her the initial gesture in an episode that she 
desired. Her self-confidence suddenly revived. Her whole 
being went still, waiting—waiting. Into her eyes there 
rose the quiet tears of content. Suddenly she looked up 
into Joe’s face. 

“Don’t you think I’d give it t’ you if it come, Joe?" 

“Yes," he said, looking down at her. 'Sure you 
would!" 


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All Rosie’s brilliances were very near him—her lips and 
eyes, her shining hair, the warm red dress—the unified 
splendour of her prepared handsomeness. 

"I guess I scared you, didn’t I?” he asked presently, 
still looking at her. 

She shook her head. "I didn’t know what the matter 
was.” 

“I’m sorry, Rosie,” he stated quietly. He lifted his 
hand from where it rested on hers and turned slightly 
sidewise. He raised her chin with the tips of his fingers 
and, looking steadily into her expectant eyes, he kissed 
her on the lips. 

Then, to Rosie’s amazement, he turned away at once 
and found his cap, and without a word he went out of the 
house; while she stood, without a word, and let him go. 


173 


& XIX ^ 


Manuel’s unannounced departure from the island, the 
circumstance of Mr. Rosario’s being so much away from 
home, the fact that Rosie was consequently often alone, 
and the repeated visits of Joe to the Rosario house were 
collectively of more than sufficient importance to attract 
and centre the attention of the community. 

None of the persons likely to know had made any 
statement to indicate Manuel’s destination, but before 
long everyone on the Fist knew that the lad had gone to 
New York, for he had sent a package to his sister. 

The post office department did not deliver mail di¬ 
rectly to the Fist. The postman drove out daily from 
Melton in a little rattling Ford, but his route ended at 
the far side of the marshes, where a group of mail boxes 
stood on stakes, at various angles, with names, initials, 
or figures daubed upon them in several colours of paint. 
From this point the mail was carried the mile or so to 
the settlement by anyone who happened to pass and who 
had time to deliver it from house to house as might be 
necessary. 

On Wednesday morning it happened that Mrs. Lemos’ 
son-in-law had driven into Melton very early for grain; 
on his way home he stopped, about ten o’clock, and 
brought on to the Fist the eight or ten pieces of mail he 
had found in the mail boxes, including Rosie’s parcel. 

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S> AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 

Having delivered the mail, he drove into his yard and 
Unloaded his grain, put up his wagon and his horses, and 
carried his newspaper into the house. 

His wife asked, "Who brought the mail?” 

‘'I did.” 

She was a genial woman. "Couldn’t you bring any¬ 
thing better for your own house than a newspaper?” she 
asked, smiling. 

"No. It’s all there was. Don’t worry ’cause you didn’t 
get any letters—they ain’t always good news.” 

"We don’t get many,” she said, "good or bad.” 

"That Rosario girl got the best o’ the bunch to-day.” 

"Yes? P’raps she got the worst—letters ain’t always 
good news.” 

"'Twasn’t letters she got No. A big box—candy, 
maybe.” 

"Candy in the mail!” 

"Sure! Why not? You can get anythin’ in the mail.” 

"Where was it from—Rosie’s candy?” 

"N’York.” 

"I wonder if it was from that Manuel that ran away.” 

The man nodded. 

"What!” she said. "You sure?” 

"His name was on it.” 

"So!” 

By Thursday it was generally known to the people of 
the Fist that Rosie Rosario had received a large box of 
candy from Manuel, that that young man was in New 
York, and that she knew his address there. Yet Rosie 
was not aware that they knew. 

She was less aware of things in general than she would 

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have been if Joe had not kissed her in that strange man¬ 
ner the night before. Rosie had never been so strangely 
kissed. She didn’t know what it meant. Certainly it 
did not mean passion. No, she knew it did not mean that. 
He had looked at her, his eyes had held her, but they had 
said nothing that she could understand. As a prelude 
to something else, something definite, the kiss would have 
been entirely satisfactory; but it had led to nothing else, 
and as a fact, standing alone, it was an enigma. It 
seemed to be a tribute of some sort; but Rosie could 
not find in it the homage that a man pays to a woman, 
not the homage that she desired of Joe. Yet it was very 
sweet, and she clung to the bare fact of the kiss as she 
might have clung to her lover himself—it was, in fact, 
all she had of him to cling to. 

Joe would come again to-night. To-night she would 
learn what the kiss meant. Or if not, then to-morrow 
night. She must be cautious; she couldn’t hurry him, for 
he might turn back, in which case to hurry him would be 
to hurry him away. 

One thing was clear: when he kissed her he did not 
believe that she had his package. 

She went to the bureau drawer and felt under the cloth¬ 
ing where the box was hidden, passed her hand over it, 
and snapped the string with her finger, assuring herself 
that it was taut. Then she closed the drawer, rose, 
looked at the lovely lady in the mirror once more, and 
went out of the room. 

Joe arrived at the Rosario house that evening, deter¬ 
mined to secure his package, for he, as well as the others, 
had heard of Rosie’s box of candy. Anger had swept 
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through him at first upon hearing the gossip that ap¬ 
prised him of Rosie’s duplicity, but he arrived in a coldly 
quiet mood. 

When Rosie opened the door for him she was brilliant, 
as she had been on the previous evening, and more as¬ 
sured, for she had their intercourse of the night before 
to go on—the conversation, the kiss, and Joe’s established 
belief in the non-arrival of the package. 

As he went in he asked at once, “Well, the bundle— 
did it come?” 

She shook her head, looking into his face, and at the 
same time she reached for the wine-bottle which already 
stood on the table. Joe wondered if, after all, it could 
be candy that she had received. But he knew better. 
In a spirit of adventure, he watched her establish her 
pretence. 

“That Manuel!” he exclaimed. “He’s a liar!” 

“Poor Manuel!” she smiled. “He’s havin’ too good a 
time in N’York, I guess, t’ remember.” 

“Huh!” Joe said. “With my ten dollars!” 

“An’ my dollars, too!” Rosie thought. 

“Where is he? You know?” 

“No,” she said. “I ain’t heard from him.” 

Rosie could go no farther in committing herself. Joe 
was amused, yet he was angry. For a moment he sipped 
his wine in silence. Then he set down his glass and 
rose, as if to go. Rosie also stood up. She was com¬ 
pletely aware that she could do nothing with this man, 
but something in her urged her to be tenacious and try, 

“You ain’t goin’?” she asked. 

“No?” he asked in return. 

“Don’t go!” she pleaded. She went to him and put 

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AN ISLAND CHRONICLE Jt 
her hand on his sleeve. “Don’t go so soon an’ leave me 
all alone. My father won’t be home till late.” She 
looked at him pleadingly, and he wondered precisely 
what she meant. It seemed to him that she had more 
than once stressed her father’s absence, the fact that she 
was alone in the house. But it didn’t matter what she 
meant—he was not interested. He gave back her gaze 
steadily; then, as she had hoped, he raised his hand and 
clasped her wrist in his fingers. So they stood for a 
minute, looking into each other’s eyes. Rosie was half 
tense, half relaxed, ready to yield to the slightest pres¬ 
sure expressing his desire—ready to hold her lips for his 
kiss, or to sink into whatever embrace he might offer her. 

His clasp slowly tightened on her wrist, the look in his 
eyes slowly changed, then he said quietly, “Look here, 
Rosie, when’re you goin't’ give me that bundle?” 

As he spoke she became aware that he understood her 
thoroughly, knew her hopes and her deception, and was 
brushing them all aside to get at the object of his own 
desire; he was using her to prosecute his scheme for sav¬ 
ing Angela. Her anger flamed, she uttered an oath, and 
struggled to free herself from his grasp; but he held her 
firmly, still looking down at her, till at last she gave up, 
perceiving the uselessness of fighting against his knowl¬ 
edge and his strength. 

“When?” he repeated. 

“Joe!” she cried. “Joe! You hurt!” 

“When?” 

He did not relax his grip. 

Rosie hung her head at last, and tears flowed down her 
cheeks. She could not speak for bitterness—the bitter¬ 
ness of having him find her out like this, of having him 
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toss her away like this—the bitterness of knowing that 
he could make her suffer and not care. She could not 
speak through those tears of pain, but she nodded her 
head in acquiescence to the demand of his questioning 
"When?” 

He let her go then and returned to his chair, and Rosie 
went out of the room, sobbing in abandonment. 

As he sat alone and awaited her return he despised 
her, heaped upon her the supercilious cold contempt with 
which a man of strong passions treats those inviting 
women who make no appeal to his desire. 

As she looked at the package, alone in her own room, 
life seemed desperate to Rosie—utterly useless. For an 
instant she realized that she held in her hand the means 
of ending all the weary emptiness of the present and the 
future. But she was in love with Joe. His brutality 
and his disdain—his utter withdrawal—made her love 
the more intense; she could not bring herself to commit 
the act that would definitely cut her off from him for 
ever. Her mind turned in a kind of humbleness—the 
abasement of the hopeless—to the power outside herself 
—not God—she did not know what—and she uttered a 
cry, asking for a sign of hope, pleading for some assurance 
to make life worth while. But no answer came, and at 
last, in misery, she dried her eyes, and went, calm and 
cold, into the kitchen. She placed the package on the 
table, and Joe sat looking at it with a faint smile. "It 
come at last, eh, Rosie?” he said, nodding. 

"I opened it,” she said quietly. 

Joe sprang out of his chair. "You what?” he cried. 

"1 opened it,” she said. "I know what it is.” 

"We better look at it, then,” he said with a sneer, and 

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S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
she threw him a swift glance of reproach for that. He 
trusted her even less than he might have. 

Joe took a knife from his pocket and cut the string, 
tossed the paper covers aside, and brought forth the re¬ 
volver and a small box of ammunition. Then he looked 
to see if the chambers were empty and, finding them so, 
he snapped the barrel round its six-pointed circle. Satis¬ 
fied with his inspection, he slipped the weapon into one 
pocket of his coat, and the ammunition into another, and 
turned to Rosie. 

“Now,” he asked with a smile, “you want t’ talk about 
marryin’?” 

“No,” she said, “but I want t’ tell you somethin' else. 
I know what you got that for.” 

“Yes?” he asked, apparently amused. 

She nodded, and he sat looking at her. She felt his 
scrutiny dully; she could have borne it indefinitely. But 
at last she asked, without looking at him, “What d’you 
suppose I kep’ it for, Joe?” 

“Hah!” he laughed. “You know what I got it for; 
you don't like me t' hurt your friend Vinti, eh?” 

“Hurt my friend Vinti?” 

Joe nodded with animation. But Rosie tossed her 
head, with a smirk that was a wry smile. He didn’t 
understand! Ah, they were stupid—men—they never un¬ 
derstood her! 

“No,” she said, “I don’t mind about Vinti. But if 
you kill him . . .” 

“Well?” he asked. 

“They’ll get you.” 

“Get me!” 

“If you kill him, they’ll get you,” she repeated in an 

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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
even, dull voice. She raised tired eyes to his face, and 
as she did so, a faded afterglow of desire shone in them 
for a moment. 

“Ah, Rosie!" Joe chaffed. “You mean . . . ?" He 
raised his eyebrows, whimsically inviting her confidence. 

She began to cry quietly again, and Joe sat looking at 
her with a faint pity. He understood then, for the first 
time—felt it as well as knew it—that she loved him with 
a high intent and some measure of intensity; he saw that 
she was devoted to him, had tried to make him see her 
love; had schemed to save him for her love. Yet the 
thing she had hoped for, schemed for, and desired was 
impossible. He was himself in love, but not with Rosie. 
She was like a child crying for the moon, as he was him¬ 
self, except for the difference of the gun in his pocket. 
He pitied her—but that was all he could do. 

At last he stood up. “I'm sorry, Rosie, but it can’t be 
done," he said. “But listen: don’t worry about me." 

He moved across the room to get his hat, and she got 
up from her chair. The moment of her last chance with 
him had arrived. 

“Listen, Joe!" she said. “Don’t you use that gun." 

“What d’you think I got it for?" he asked, smiling. 

“I’m goin’ t’ tell," she answered, without emotion. 

He walked over and stood before her. “What’s the 
matter with you?" he asked. “Everything you do an’ 
everything you say is crazy!" 

“I’m goin’ t’ tell ’em you got it," she repeated. 

“Huh!" he sneered. “Run an’ tell him. Tell him 
quick. Run an’ tell your friend Vinti t’ look out! An’ 
after that, look out yourself." 

“I’ll tell everyone you’ve got that gun." 

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“Say!” he answered. “I’ll tell you somethin'! You're 
the on'y woman I ever see that I’d be afraid t’ marry. 
You’re a liar an' a crook! You’re rotten!” 

He swept out of the house, angry and determined, and 
took his way around by Vinti’s shack; but the place was 
deserted. Out on the waters, like stars, he could see 
the lanterns of Vinti's crew blinking in the vicinity of 
the fish-pound. 


182 


XX ^ 


After Joe’s departure Rosie sat dejected, gazing before 
her with unseeing eyes. She was thinking of Joe, of what 
might have been, and of the blank emptiness that re¬ 
mained instead. Her mind hovered about her dead hopes 
and longings, and finally clung, as a drowning man clings 
to any tangible thing, to the mysterious kiss—the one 
fact of substance in all that floating mass of wrecked 
visions. She did not yet know what the kiss had meant. 
It had been a tribute, perhaps it had been a promise, but 
if so, it was a lie and would never be fulfilled. Perhaps 
it had meant pity. Pity! That was the most bitter thing 
he could have given her. She did not understand Joe; 
she did not understand herself. He pitied her, and yet 
she loved him. 

Her mind roused at last to the realities of the present 
—Joe was gone, with the revolver, leaving behind him 
the threat of his determination. She rose to her feet, 
was almost dragged out of the house by her desire to 
follow him, to plead with him, to dissuade him; but she 
knew it to be useless. Then the realization of his danger 
again came flooding over her, and she became nervous 
with terror at the threat of that impending catastrophe. 

In the midst of her agitation a thought came to her 
very gently, very quietly—came to her casually in the 
midst of her fears. It pulled her up short. Her brain 
said, simply, “Angela.” 


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'j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 

Angela? Go to Angela, the stupid? The stupid! The 
stupid who, with all her stupidity, held the love of one 
of these men and the marriage fealty of the other-— 
perhaps Angela could do something to save them both— 
for herself! Deep fires of hatred flamed up in Rosie 
at the thought of that other woman. Both of the men 
belonged to her. Why should she, Rosie, try to save 
either of them? No! She would sit here at home and 
let those others fight out their affair by themselves. It 
was nothing to her. 

No, it was nothing to her; yet as she told herself so, 
she was trying to think through her hatred, trying to 
think through a terror of apprehension. In her deepest 
mind she knew that she must go—must save Joe at any 
cost. 

At last she laughed wearily at herself, and went to put 
on her hat and jacket. Her fingers hurried and fumbled; 
but at last she was ready. Then she went out and hur¬ 
ried to the house of the Granias. 

Everything in the Grania house was quiet; Angela was 
alone. She stood, apprehensive at this late and unex¬ 
pected visit, and motioned Rosie into a chair. “What is 
it?” she wanted to cry out—her eyes cried it; but she 
held her tongue and smothered her suspense, waiting for 
her guest to speak. 

That was not an easy thing for Rosie to do. It had not 
been easy for her to come. That had seemed to be the 
last rally of her energy, the last testimonial of her love— 
the fling of the torch for Angela to catch and carry on, 
for Joe’s sake, while she herself should be left behind. 
Having arrived at the house, Rosie feared that she would 
have to fling the torch again and again before Angela’s 
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stupidity would grasp it. And, actually, it was not only 
that—not only abandoning everything to this other 
woman and finding an oblivious peace—for there was 
something that she would still like to save, if possible— 
a tattered remnant of illusion, a patch of self-deception, 
something that could not be stated, to clothe, to decorate, 
even, some day perhaps, to sublimate the stark imbecil¬ 
ity of that precious, senseless kiss. She considered how 
to fling the torch, but she considered also how to save 
her illusion. She must maintain her dignity before this 
girl whom she hated and despised. 

“Listen, Angela," she began at last. “You know Man¬ 
uel's gone away." 

Angela nodded, but Rosie paid no heed. 

“Well, when he went," she continued, “that young 
fellah Joe, over to Santos', wanted him t’ get him some¬ 
thin' in N'York. But he didn’t want anyone t’ know he 
had it, so Manuel sent it t’ me." 

She did pause for an instant then, to see how Angela 
took that, and she noted with a gleam of satisfaction that 
she took it with amazement. 

“What d'you suppose he had it sent t' me for?" she 
went on, with the air of a school-teacher. 

“What was it?” Angela asked in return, leaping all pre¬ 
liminaries, to Rosie's astonishment. 

“A revolver." 

Angela, shocked, gazed at her visitor. 

“How d'you know what it was?" she asked. 

“I opened the bundle t’ see." 

“Ah! Then you didn't give it to him!" 

“Yes, I did." 

“You did! Oh, Rosie, what did you do that for?" 

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“He made me. But now . . . ” 

“When?” Angela interrupted. 

“Half an hour ago.” 

There flashed into Angela’s mind—complete, detailed, 
horrible, and swiftly changing—pictures of Joe dead, muti¬ 
lated, destroyed. She saw him perform the awful, shat¬ 
tering act; she saw him performing it then—that instant; 
fancied she could hear the echoing terror of the shot, felt 
its sharp concussion on her heart. 

“Joe!” she gasped. “Joe! Don’t!” Then she cried at 
Rosie, “Where is he?” 

Rosie shrugged. “I do’ know,” she answered, gone 
suddenly stupid. “Home, I guess.” 

Angela’s rising excitement made a demand on Rosie’s 
emotions which they were too spent to meet. She was 
very tired—exhausted. She continued to sit there, mo¬ 
tionless, as Angela rushed out of the house. 

“She’s not such a fool!” Rosie thought vaguely. 
“Never even thought o’ poor Vinti.” She laughed a dry 
little laugh. Well, she'd go home. She was done with 
them all. 

She rose after a while and went out of the house. She 
would have liked to follow Angela, but she was too 
tired. What did it matter, anyway, what Angela might 
do? What did anything matter? 

Angela, filled with terror, ran swiftly under the stars, 
and as she went she prayed for help in what she had to 
do, prayed that Joe’s act might still be delayed. As 
she prayed she turned her eyes to heaven, and there be¬ 
fore her, blotting out the stars, rose the plane of the Fist 
like the shadow of a perpetual menace. Its immobility, 
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its strength, its placid indifference filled her with an in¬ 
creased sense of terror. She alone could save Joe; noth¬ 
ing in heaven or on earth would help her. 

But as she hurried across the narrows below the Fist, 
she perceived a point of light in one of the upper win¬ 
dows of the Santos house. Her heart leaped to it. It 
seemed somehow re ssuring, and she started to run again 
toward its promise. 

Then, suddenly, as she ran, the light went out; the 
oblong brightness of that window was blotted into the 
surrounding gloom. She was alone again in a wide, hov¬ 
ering terror. The obliteration of that friendly light was 
like a warning of defeat, a signal of some deep finality. 
Terror surged about her, filled all space, became the 
substance of the sea and sky, the earth, the fluid air. 
Every stone she stumbled on seemed placed by some 
malign power; every wind that hummed in her ears was 
like the mocking murmur of an opposed intelligence; 
every surging of the sea was like the conscious measuring 
of an hour of doom. Through it all she hurried; her 
limbs moved automatically. She was mercilessly beset, 
but she never stopped; and at last she came to the house 
of old man Santos. 

The house stood very dark and still—waiting, secre¬ 
tive, as if it held temporarily a secret which, when 
divulged, would go shrieking through the night and fill 
the surrounding terror with triumphant echoes. 

Angela had come to save Joe. Now her courage fal¬ 
tered at facing that tremendous issue—that tremendous 
possibility—for the house told her she had come too late. 
Its windows showed like faces, forbidding her to in¬ 
trude upon a fact accomplished—sending her away—for 
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what had she to do with him now? She was too late! 

But she faced this menace also. Joe was hers! Dead 
or alive, he was hers! 

“No! No! Oh, my God!” she whispered, denying her 
fears; and she banged on the door. 

She heard a rumble within, but there was no answer; 
the house was not yet ready to divulge its secret. 

She banged again, madly, without waiting; but the 
only answer was the silence of a great delay. 

Holy Mother! Were they all dead? She banged 
again, viciously. “Hey!” she cried. “Hey! Hey! 
Hey!” Then, with a little whimper, she abandoned her 
rationality; she banged without ceasing. She was ready 
to let her humanity go—ready to become a beast, a sav¬ 
age, a part of the surrounding terror. But as she pounded 
she heard a voice at last. 

“Hi! Wait!” cried Mr. Santos. “Who’s there?” 

“Oh, hurry!” she begged, banging again on the panels. 

The old man opened the door. “ Twasn’t locked,” 
he said, peering to see what ailed this woman who pounded 
and shrieked like mad. He held in his hand a flashlight, 
and he tried to focus its projected circle of brightness 
into her face; but she rushed past him before he could 
do so—rushed into the kitchen and would have rushed 
through the house, but she did not know which was the 
right turn to take. So she paused, and at last old man 
Santos got his little circle of light fixed upon her. 

“Ah!” he exclaimed at sight of her. “You want Joe?” 

He thought her coming meant that she had abandoned 
Vinti; but her appearance frightened him. 

“Sit down, Angela,” he said quietly, revealing, with 
his light, a chair out of the darkness. 

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“Where is he—Joe?” she asked, paying no heed. 

“Sit down,” he said firmly. He placed his arm about 
her trembling body and led her to the seat, and she sank 
into it dazedly. 

“Joe?” she asked. 

You want Joe? I'll fetch him,” the old man said. 

Mrs. Santos came into the kitchen and, seeing Angela, 
she hurried forward and enveloped the girl in an ample 
embrace. “What? What?” the old woman cried. 

“Light the lamp,” Santos ordered, “an’ give Angela 
some wine. I’ll get Joe.” 

When he had gone Angela held her breath, tensely 
waiting for the old man’s cry when he should find Joe 
dead. But there was no cry. Instead, she heard voices 
murmuring. Soon Santos returned, followed by Joe, and 
at sight of the young man Angela leaped from her chair, 
putting her wine-glass into the hand of Mrs. Santos, 
who stood beside her. 

“Oh, Joe!” she cried. “Joe, where is it?” 

Her eyes went over him, searching, searching. To her 
it was as if he had come back from the dead, and she 
was seeking to find the mark of the wound that had 
killed him. 

He did not understand her cry. He came close and 
tried to touch her, but she evaded him and, wringing her 
hands, she cried wildly, “Oh, where is it? For God’s 
sake, can’t you tell me?” 

He knew then that she meant the revolver, and he 
thought he understood her motive in seeking it. 

“I’ve got it,” he said. “I’ve got it safe.” 

She looked at him with eyes grown suddenly listless. 
Her terror was over; she had heard him speak. She 
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seemed to wilt, to shrink before their eyes. Joe felt a 
great pity for her, a great pity for himself, that he could 
not comfort them both by taking her in his arms. But 
it was not for that that she had come. No, she had 
come to save Vinti. 

“Give it t’ me, Joe?” she begged. 

“No,” he said. “Til keep it. You won’t need it.” 

“Need it!” she cried. “Oh, you won’t use it?” 

He laughed, but it sounded bitter. It hurt his pride 
and his love that she should come begging like this for 
the other man’s protection. 

“You won’t use it—promise me, Joe?” she pleaded. 
“Give it t’ me?” 

“Ha!” he said. “For a weddin’-present, maybe.” 

He recalled Rosie’s ironic suggestion. For a moment 
then it occurred to him, as it had occurred to Rosie, that 
he might use this weapon concerning which there was so 
much controversy, for his own peace instead of for Vinti’s 
harm. He need not suffer such things as this any more. 
But he put the thought away at once. He was unhappy, 
and the world promised him nothing; but there were a 
thousand possibilities — even possibilities involving An¬ 
gela—and his youth cried out instinctively that life was 
better than death. 

He was roused from his reverie, for suddenly Angela 
sank to the floor, and kneeling before him, she cried out, 
“Joe! Don’t do it! Give it to me, Joe! Oh, my God! 

I can’t have two deaths on my soul!” She lowered her 
face into her hands and wept; she was convulsed with 
the thought of her everlasting damnation. 

Joe and the old man stooped quickly and lifted her to 

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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
her chair. Mrs. Santos leaned over and soothed her. 

What is it, for God's sake?" the old woman cried, 
grown angry at Joe’s apparent brutality. “Can’t you do 
what she wants?" 

Joe looked at Mrs. Santos, looked at Angela, still sob¬ 
bing desolately. Then he turned to old man Santos be¬ 
side him and exclaimed, “God! Women! What’re they 
for?" He was half angry, half sad, completely overcome. 
Then, without giving the old man time to answer, he said, 
“Get your boots on, an* we’ll take her home." 

Later the three of them walked back in silence to 
Angela’s house. The lamp was still burning in the 
empty kitchen. As she stood within the door of the 
lighted room, while they stood just outside, she looked at 
Joe with beseeching eyes. “Joe," she begged softly, 
“promise me you won’t?" 

“Look," he said. “It’s all right. I didn’t know how 
you felt. But I know now, an’ you don’t need t’ worry; 

I won’t hurt Vinti—I promise." 

He turned away as he spoke, and before she recovered 
from the shock of his statement he and the old man were 
gone. Vinti! The possibility of Joe’s attacking Vinti 
entered into her head then for the first time. For a 
moment she stood appalled at the idea, appalled at what 
she had done. She realized that she had closed the 
door against her own last chance for escape; and now, 
as the clang of that irrevocable closing rang in her ears, 
her mind held a fleeting, remembered vision of the love¬ 
liness that lay beyond that door—loveliness now for ever 
unattainable. And Joe! She saw that he had misun¬ 
derstood her solicitude, did not know that it was he whom 
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she had tried to save. The bitterness of that! She sat 
staring stupidly before her; things had become too hope¬ 
less for tears. 

She presently had for solace, however, the dim thought 
that in spite of his misunderstanding, she had saved Joe. 
She perceived that whatever he might have done with 
the revolver would probably have been fatal to his own 
safety. She clutched at the thought that she had saved 
him; he did not understand, but she had saved him 
nevertheless. Actually, he did not need to know. And 
yet, she wished that he had not misunderstood. . . . 

Joe and old man Santos returned quietly in the dark. 
As they crossed the narrows the old man put his arm 
about the young fellow’s shoulder, and the gesture was 
like the kindest word he could have said. It broke Joe’s 
silence. 

“I better tell you about this,” he proposed, and the old 
man nodded in the dark. 

“Well, I bought a gun,” he began, “an’ I was goin’ after 
Vinti.” 

Santos’ fingers tightened on the lad’s shoulder. 

“Oh, I could ’a’ done it an’ never been caught. Vinti’s 
big enough t’ hit, an’ the nights are dark. But y’ can’t 
do anythin’ with women. That Rosie opened the box 
an’ found out what was in it.” 

“Rosie?” 

“Yes. Her brother sent me the gun from N’York, an’ 

I was t’ go to their house an’ get it. Y’ see, I didn’t want 
anyone t’ know I had it, so I didn’t want it t’ come t’ me. 
Well, Manuel sent it t’ her, an’ she opened the box an’ 
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j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
found out, an’ there was the end of it. She must ’a* told 
Angela, an’ then she come t’ beg for his life.” 

They had crossed the narrows, and now Santos, guid¬ 
ing with a pressure of his hand on Joe’s shoulder, urged 
the lad toward home; but Joe resisted. “No, not yet,” 
he said. “I got t' talk.” 

He led the steep way up the face of the cliff, and the 
old man went along with him in silence. 

“I’d of done anythin’ t’ save Angela,” Joe began again. 
“I didn’t know she cared so much about Vinti. Well, 
this is the end for me. I never wanted t’ get married 
till I met Angel; now I don’t want to any more.” He 
laughed sneeringly at his own folly. “I used t’ play 
with the girls,” he went on, “but I never done ’em any 
harm; now they give me hell! Angel turns me down, 
an’ Rosie goes an’ tells my only secret. I can’t see what 
makes ’em all so wild about that fat guy Vinti.” 

The old man said nothing and they mounted on to the 
apex of the curving rim. They stood there, side by side, 
a moment, and then Joe began to talk again. 

“Look,” he said. “Here’s the gun.” He took the re¬ 
volver from his pocket, and the starlight shone in a blue 
line along its barrel as Santos gazed at it. “It’s all 
loaded an’ ready for business,” Joe said, “but it’ll never 
do any business. It’s like me—turned down, no good, 
thrown away.” 

As he finished speaking he made a wide, overhand, 
swinging gesture with his arm, and Santos saw a dull 
gleam shoot out into space. After an instant that gleam 
was no longer visible, and in a moment, with a light 
splash, the gun signalled its descent into the sea. 

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Joe and Santos stood there, seemed to listen, seemed 
to wait for some response, as if Joe’s act had been in pro¬ 
pitiation of old gods—seemed to be waiting for a sign 
that the sacrifice offered was good and acceptable. But 
there was no sign, no response—only the shiver of stars 
in the silent void of the sky, and the echoing passionless 
turmoil of quiet seas. 

At last Santos stirred and led the way down to the 
long outcropping ledges of the cliff’s substance. Here 
he sat down, and Joe sat beside him. For a while neither 
of them spoke, but at last old man Santos remarked, 
“You’re young, Joe.” 

There was another silence. Then Santos went on, 
“Women, Joe—I do’ know! They’re made f’r us, but 
we’re made f’r them, too. It’s nature an’ it’s God. Men 
destroy women an’ women destroy men, but together they 
create life. It’s a strange thing! They’re always fightin’. 
Even when they’re in love they’re fightin’—like fire 
an’ water—an’ yet they make life. An’ life, Joe, what 
is it, eh? I do’ know! Men fight women an’ women 
fight men. Then we die, an’ it don’t make no difference. 
What’s it all for?—who knows? 

“You never want’t’ marry till you met Angela. Well, 
you think there’s on’y one woman f’r a man? Father 
Pasquale, he says yes. I do’ know! I see men marry 
more than once. Women, too, they don’t stay widahs. 
How’s that? Ah, well, you say—it ain’t the marryin’ 
that counts, it’s the love. ... Joe, I got t’ tell you this: 
love ain’t all. Men get over love, like a sickness. When 
they get that sickness they don’t want t’ get well. But 
they got t’ get well. Sure! You get well an’ you get 
sick again—an’ again. One time when you get sick you 
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maybe marry; an’ maybe you get well after that—but 
you mustn’t never get sick again, eh? No. You believe 
that, then! So you don’t fight the women no more— 
no, on’y jus’ the one woman; an’ she fights back at you— 
always, till you die. That fight—it’s your life an’ her 
life. 

"'Yes, that’s life, Joe—fightin’. You got t’ do it. It’s 
like your hand, Joe, or your heart—it’s in you, an’ you 
can’t help it. Jus’ now you’re sick—sick with the love 
like I say—sick with the fightin’. Yes, sick with the 
love—you see?” 

“No,” Joe said quietly, “I ain’t sick. I may go on 
fightin’ the women like you say, but I ain’t sick any more 
now, an’ I won’t be sick again—ever. I’m cured o’ lovin’ 
’em. I’m cured for always.” 

“So!” Mr. Santos exclaimed. He shook his head and 
smiled faintly in the darkness. “Come!” he said, ris¬ 
ing. “Let us go down. We plant the corn down there 
to-morrah, Joe.” 

Joe rose, and they descended the plane of the Fist 
together. 


195 


^ XXI ^ 


Ten days later, Angela was, without impediment, mar¬ 
ried to Giorgio Vinti in the little chapel. Only the per¬ 
sons directly concerned were present—Father Pasquale, 
Giorgio and Angela, Mr. Grania, and the witnesses. 

On the morning of her wedding-day Angela was filled 
with a serene peacefulness. She had been gradually 
putting all doubts and questionings behind her; she had 
reached a point from which she could see the past as fin¬ 
ished and the future as waiting, single and inevitable, 
for her coming. She had at last turned her face reso¬ 
lutely toward the scene of her duty and had gone forward, 
braced by conviction, to fulfil her vow. There was 
something of the spirit of a martyr in her resolution, and 
she felt, too, increasingly, the hovering approval of her 
mother—the satisfied forgiveness of the dead woman's 
spirit. 

Angela faced the dawn of a new day. But the old 
day was not quite dead, and as she glanced backward 
from her intermediate situation, she beheld it still there, 
still visible in a growing dimness. In that dim past even 
Joe had faded. He moved, to her vision, as upon a 
height—as upon the height of the Fist itself—outlined 
bleak and dark against a waning sky. She could not see 
his features; but from the motion of that silhouette with 
bowed head, she knew that he did not laugh; he went 
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£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
alone, sombre, sad, pathetic. The splendid image of him 
which she had held in her heart had altered and, in 
altering, it had become less shining, less clear—blurred 
and dimmed by the tears of her renunciation. She saw 
him now only as that silhouette against the sky of the 
past—an effigy, a caricature—Joe, her joyful lover, with 
bowed head. 

The future, like the past, was dim to her vision, but 
it was dim in the dusk of a coming brightness. It was, 
in fact, a wide new space, a great new land, where the 
light was growing. Without detailed thought she imag¬ 
ined that life in the future would be richer, better than 
any she had ever known—enlarged and rounded with the 
substance of new importances to match its brightness and 
its space; and she was lifted, spiritually and physically, 
in a mild eagerness to meet the challenge and the prom¬ 
ise which it held. 

The note of largeness, of importance, was struck by 
Giorgio. His was the only figure emerging with any 
clearness, as yet, in that growing light. He emerged, in 
fact, as a large, jovial, embodied kindness, and An¬ 
gela had come to see him in a rational relationship. 
Never since the day of her wild cry (that was a lie) in 
the dark little hall of the empty house, had she pretended 
to love him; but her terror of him had given place to a 
quiet acceptance, while there had grown up in her con¬ 
sciousness a sense of gratitude, loyalty, even liking for 
the bluff old man. It was the result, perhaps, of the 
diffusion of her interest in him over the interests of his 
life; for, while it frequently occurred to Angela’s mind 
that Giorgio had been a sensualist, he seemed to have 
come to her recovered, reformed, carrying no visible 
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je AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
sign or scar of his hectic past; and as he talked of plans 
for the new house, his business, their marriage, he did 
so with a force and enthusiasm that testified to his com¬ 
plete interest in the future. If these new visions were to 
be built upon the past—as they unavoidably were— 
Giorgio, in so building, seemed to have buried deep all 
memory of those former times, thereby obliterating them 
as facts, since only in memory can the past survive. 

Actually as well as seemingly, Giorgio had for the 
time forgotten the old days in the contemplation of the 
future. He was disillusioned. When he had looked 
back upon the past, not so long ago, it had seemed in 
many phases to have been a silly business. He realized 
that heretofore he had not even undertaken a man's com¬ 
plete job. Now he was ready to do so; he turned to the 
future with all his energy, turned his back upon the past 
without regret. 

Angela’s wedding-day was beautiful with all that 
nature at mid-May could furnish. The sun shone in a 
lightly clouded sky and the winds had become kind under 
its large beneficence. The sea was blue and bright. The 
island stretched away softly green on every hand. It 
was a day for laughter, for tenderness, for love. 

After the simple marriage ceremony, Giorgio and 
Angela crossed to the mainland with Father Pasquale in 
the priest’s small boat and, having landed, they bade him 
a smiling good-bye. With Giorgio the little priest was 
calmly congratulatory; with Angela he was frankly ten¬ 
der. He took and held her hand as he talked with her 
apart. 

“Remember, Angela, my child,” he said, “that you 
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have undertaken the greatest responsibility in life—not 
only in material, but in spiritual things. In becoming a 
wife, you become one of God’s chosen creatures—chosen 
to do His mysterious work; and in becoming a mother, 
you will be approaching very near to God Himself, for 
you will, by His grace, be creating life and bringing im¬ 
mortal souls to the test of life. In the meantime, my 
child, remember your duty as a Catholic. Your husband 
is not a good Catholic. We must pray and strive to bring 
him within the fold of the church, that he may recognize 
and acknowledge his God. Fundamentally Giorgio is a 
good man, but he doesn’t know. You must enlighten his 
ignorance. Pray to the Blessed Virgin to help you in this. 
Now good-bye; and may God be with you in your new 
life.” 

It was in the spirit of this high and beautiful, this 
holy picture, that Angela began her honeymoon with 
Giorgio. They went to Boston in the train. From there 
they went to New York in a great steamer, and spent two 
days viewing the immensities and grandeurs of the 
metropolis. 

During those few days and nights, Giorgio was always 
humorously kind, and he respected, with unimagined re¬ 
straint, his young wife’s hesitant modesty. She was not, 
he told himself, like other women he had known,, and his 
relation to her was not as his relations to them had been. 
He knew that he could not, and he did not, expect Angela 
to leap at once into an approximation of his own years 
and his own knowledge—he did not want her to do so. 
On the contrary, he was willing to go a long way back to 
meet her on the road of experience; and in a temporary 
tender mood he even wished, for her sake and, yes, surely 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
for his own, that he might go farther—that he might go 
so far back on that road that they could, somehow, start 
out together from the same point of virtue, impelled by the 
same mysterious, fearful eagerness. 

That, of course, could not be; but under the influence 
of his mood he grew perceptibly more kind. He was 
always jolly, and as they travelled in Broadway, Fifth 
Avenue, or Forty-second Street (for he avoided old 
haunts that he knew in another section of the town), he 
was amusedly conscious of the unmistakable stares that 
many individuals in the moving mass of people treated 
him to. It tickled his egotism that even in New York 
he should be conspicuous. He knew, of course, that the 
presence of Angela, dressed in clothes that were patently 
the garments of a bride, was one of the reasons for those 
stares, and he at once perceived her to be of that most 
gratifying type of acquisition—a bulwark to one’s pride. 

In this mood of satisfaction and with the assurance 
that he had in his pocket sufficient money for any ex¬ 
travagance that the city might suggest his attempting, he 
saw no reason why he should not attempt its brightest, 
its most “classy” restaurant and revue. He chuckled to 
himself complacently and, with a feeling of exhilaration 
at adventuring so far out of his orbit, he made the at¬ 
tempt. What he landed at was, with his usual good luck, 
precisely what he had aimed at—a “classy” up-town 
cabaret, one of New York’s most tawdry, though ex¬ 
pensive, blatancies—and because he and Angela arrived 
early, they secured a table at once. It was not until 
they were seated opposite each other over the small white 
square of the table-top that Angela dared to raise her 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
eyes and investigate the dim spaces surrounding that 
small white island. 

Having done so, she was not very clear about where 
she was. She had a confused sense of having been mys¬ 
teriously transported out of New York; yet she did not 
know where she had been transported to. She was of 
a sufficient naivete to accept the elaborate decoration al¬ 
most at its face value—to give herself up to its illusion— 
and she was extraordinarily charmed to find herself in 
this white marble temple whose columns rose, on the one 
side, against a far-reaching perspective of flowered lawns 
and deep blue water, and, on the other, against a wooded 
hill from which other marble temples looked seaward 
over her head. Upon the balustrade of the temple in 
which she sat, numbers of iridescent peacocks poised and 
preened, and all about her, gaudy parrots hung, erect 
and at angles of inversion. At the end of the temple 
was a shrine—a guarded space—screened by a pale green 
curtain on which other parrots and peacocks poised and 
preened. It was as if these birds were the symbols of the 
temple's dedication to pride and glamour and a raucous 
inconsequence. 

As she and Giorgio ate their expensive dishes, the 
temple gradually became filled with devotees, lights be¬ 
came more bright, and at last the drapery was drawn 
away before that guarded space, and the coloured jazz- 
orchestra was, amid a light round of applause, presented 
to view, with all its gleaming smiles. 

The orchestra at once went to work, playing capably 
and with countless gyrations a nervous, noisy, rhythmic 
fox-trot. Promptly a young man rose from a table where 
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AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jn 
he had been eating and, with a young lady in his arms, 
glided out upon the floor, under the critical eyes of the 
assembled audience. Soon other couples moved sway- 
ingly out upon the floor. For Angela the effect was 
confusing, for while she tried to follow the perfect, in¬ 
comprehensible figures which the original pair seemed to 
be weaving, she found it impossible as the floor became 
more and more crowded, and she had at last simply to 
gaze, fascinated, at all those people joyfully weaving, 
each couple its own different pattern, within the great 
pattern that wove and wove about the hall. 

It was in this exciting kaleidoscope of dancers that 
Angela saw Manuel Rosario—in a great barbaric blare 
of the music that her eyes caught him. She was not at 
first sure that it was Manuel, for the young man who 
suggested him was at the far side of the dancing-space, 
moving with an easy smoothness in the revolving stream 
of figures. As he moved he talked quietly and listened 
to the low laughter of the small, bright blonde girl who 
was dancing with him. 

They came on—the young man and his partner—mov¬ 
ing in the gaudy rhythm of the music, and Angela was 
forthwith able to see them more clearly. The young 
man did not turn his head as he moved, but his eyes 
swept quietly, slowly, over the succeeding arcs of vision 
that opened to him as he stepped along in the dance. 
Angela was soon sure that the young man was Manuel, 
and she was promptly aware that when his roving look 
came to the place where she sat it paused, stopped and 
lingered. The animation in his face gave place to a 
surprised stare, and he turned his head then, quickly, to 
see who her partner at the table was. Perceiving Giorgio, 
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urbane and smiling, his eyes turned back to Angela with 
a kind of eagerness, and the blood mounted visibly un¬ 
der the smooth surface of his calm till his whole face 
glowed beneath the even halves of his shining hair. 

He stopped in his swing about the oblong dancing- 
space, and murmuring to his gay blonde partner, he led 
her forward to the table where his friends sat. As she 
watched them come on, Angela was amazed at the other 
girl’s costume—so scant, so suggesting, so revealing. It 
didn’t seem to this newly-married woman that the girl 
could have on anything whatever besides her visible gar¬ 
ments—the daintiest black silk slippers, black silk stock¬ 
ings, and the plainest, shortest, narrowest of all possible 
black silk dresses. She seemed to be costumed with an in¬ 
tense economy. The blonde creature was herself charm¬ 
ing, very young and very small. Her delicately, deliber¬ 
ately unconcerned manner gave the impression that she 
was unconscious of how little she was wearing, and it 
gave too, indefinably, the impression that she would not 
have minded wearing even less. 

As she and Manuel came forward to the table, Giorgio 
saw them, glimpsed Manuel and recognized him, and then 
his eyes settled in a long look upon the little blonde 
girl. He watched every movement of her body, the de¬ 
liberate swing of her slim legs, the shine of her bright 
hair, and the calm regard of her large pale eyes. 

“Ha!” he laughed, shortly, happily, as they came up; 
and he rose with a genial eagerness. Giorgio was, in fact, 
delighted. He had been growing a little weary of his 
surroundings, for he had begun to feel that in this temple 
of pleasure he was merely a tolerated onlooker; and he 
did not want to be a tolerated onlooker. He wanted to 
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be in the midst of everything, but he didn’t know how to 
get in—yet there had been certain eyes which, in passing, 
had looked into his own not unkindly. The coming of 
Manuel and the little girl—especially the coming of the 
little girl—was as the coming of messengers from that 
surrounding pleasure. 

A waiter was summoned, he brought two chairs, and 
Manuel and his partner sat down at the table. 

“What’ll you have?” Giorgio asked in a large manner, 
looking at the girl. 

“Let me order,” Manuel suggested. “Let me order 
somethin’ for all of us.” 

“Go ahead!” Giorgio laughed. “Go ahead! You or¬ 
der, an’ I’ll pay.” 

Manuel turned and spoke quietly to the waiter, and 
the waiter disappeared, returning after a while with four 
small coffee-cups filled with a liquid that gave off neither 
the odour nor the steam of coffee. 

“See how you like that!” Manuel said; and at his sug¬ 
gestion they lifted the cups and drank the contents in 
their respective manners. 

Giorgio was delighted. He and Manuel exchanged an 
appreciative grin, and the old man asked, suddenly 
dropping his voice to a whisper, “Can we get any more?” 

Manuel laughed. “All you want t’ pay for,” he said. 
“Hey! Waiter!” 

The music began and the girl looked at Manuel with 
a question in her eyes. 

“Want t’ dance?” he asked. 

“Sure!” she said. 

“ ’Scuse us!” Manuel exclaimed, rising. They were 
about to start away, but Giorgio laid his hand on the 
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girl’s slim bare arm. “Bring him back here,” he com¬ 
manded. 

She looked at Giorgio with clear eyes and smiled very 
faintly. Then she gave a little nod and threaded her 
way after Manuel to the dancing-space, and they swung 
off into the already flowing stream. 

“Giorgio, what’s that in the cups?” Angela asked. 

“Cocktails. Don’t you like it?” 

“It’s all right,” she said, “but it’s strong.” 

He laughed mildly. A new animation had come to 
him—not alone from the cocktail, but from the fact of 
his changed relation to all the pervading gaiety. He felt 
that he was now a part of it. It had come over and held 
out its hand to him, had even admitted him to one of the 
secrets of its joy. 

“Drink it,” he said; “it’s good for you.” 

The waiter brought them four other small cups, and 
Giorgio paid the eight dollars demanded. He was sur¬ 
prised at the price, but he admitted to himself that he 
was getting his money’s worth; he reminded himself that 
a wedding-trip happened only once, perhaps, in a life¬ 
time, and he tipped the efficient waiter generously. 

Soon the others returned. The waiter whispered to 
Manuel, and Manuel looked at Giorgio. “Sure!” Giorgio 
called out eagerly. “Why not? They don’t last long!” 

Four more cups were promptly placed. 

Most of the lights went out. 

Then, down across the dancing-place a group of girls 
came swaying, shining white and silver, with faces like 
flowers, under floods of light from some hidden source, 
swathed in pale diaphanous draperies that were not cos¬ 
tumes but part of a decorative scheme. Angela gasped 
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at the exposed slim loveliness of the girls, beside whom 
the little blonde seemed decorously clothed. Entirely 
ignorant of the arts of costume and make-up, Angela was 
more shocked than she needed to be. A part of her 
emotional protest at the gorgeous spectacle was a kind 
of sympathy for the dancing-maids—which they would 
have vigorously resented. They were, as a matter of fact, 
conscious of their slim loveliness, and they wanted, not 
sympathy, but applause. 

Manuel paid little attention to the cabaret. Neither 
the music nor the dancing-girls seemed to interest him. 
He moved his chair over beside Angela’s and began to 
talk, in a subdued voice, about her marriage, what she 
had seen in New York, about his family, about the is¬ 
land, about Joe; and as Angela talked with him she 
looked at him. He was greatly changed; he seemed 
somehow to be smoothed, slicked, polished; his clothes 
fitted him, made him appear slim and elegant. She felt 
that in leaving the island he had done a right thing, that 
he had succeeded, though she could not have said what 
his success consisted of or amounted to. He seemed, 
somehow, to belong in this gay, rich, splendid atmosphere, 
and he seemed more American than Portuguese. She 
wondered fleetingly how he managed to afford all that he 
seemed to be affording; that he seemed able to afford so 
much was a part of the American impression. He talked 
constantly, but he did not talk about himself. 

In the meantime Giorgio was taking an interest in the 
little blonde partner. She was amiable enough in her 
reserved way, but Giorgio, to his own surprise, was 
piqued, irritated at her reserve. He wanted her to re¬ 
spond to the efforts he was making to draw her out; he 
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felt an intense desire to make her respond. He could not 
conceive of her laughing heartily at anything whatever, 
and he was aware of a desire to be cruel to her, to hurt 
her, to make her cry out—make her respond—to that. 
He wanted to take her in his arms, to feel the slimness 
of that light body in the grasp of his strength. He 
wanted to crush her, to hurt her—to comfort her. 

Manuel watched them, listened to them covertly as 
he talked with Angela, and he heard Giorgio ask the girl: 

“What d’you do fr a livin’ ?” 

“I’m a manicurist,” she replied, looking calmly into his 
face. From the manner in which she said it, Giorgio 
gathered that it was something important, and he was 
almost ashamed to exhibit his ignorance of what she 
meant. 

“Oh! Well, ah—what’s that?” he finally asked. 

“I fix your hands.” 

“Fix ’em?” 

“Yes. Sure. I fix ’em.” 

She very deliberately took his big dark hand in hers 
and beside it she placed her other, slim, white, polished. 
Giorgio laughed out at the contrast. 

“I see!” he cried, curling his great paw about her fin¬ 
gers, below the table. She did not object to his holding 
her fingers, but as he made no further suggestion, she 
drew her hand away after a minute. Actually Giorgio 
didn’t know how to proceed. He was unaccountably 
stirred by this girl’s coldness, and he would have liked 
to take some measures to move her to a display of feeling. 
It irritated him that his wife and Manuel were there. 

The cabaret was finished amid a clamour of applause, 
and the shining, diaphanous girls withdrew. Waiters 
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jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
began to hurry about. Everybody’s interest returned to 
the small tables at which they sat. Manuel finished the 
contents of his cup; the others did likewise. The music 
of the jazz rattled and swayed through the temple again, 
and Manuel and the little blonde stood up. 

“Well, good-bye,” Manuel said, holding out his hand 
to Angela. “Remember me t’ the folks.” Then he 
turned to Giorgio. “We got t’ go after this dance,” he 
said. “How long’re you goin’ t’ be in N’York?” 

“Oh, we leave f r home in the mornin’.” 

“Back to the seaweed, eh?” Manuel laughed. 

Giorgio shook hands and nodded without a word. It 
seemed to him that the boy had expressed it exactly: 
back to the seaweed! 

“Thanks for the drinks!” Manuel cried, starting away. 

The little blonde girl bowed calmly, smiled calmly, 
and started after her partner. It hurt Giorgio to see 
her go so unemotionally. He wondered how Manuel 
could stand it; then it maddened him to think that per¬ 
haps Manuel didn’t have to stand it—perhaps she saved 
her emotion just for him. 

Mr. and Mrs. Vinti soon left the white marble temple 
and stepped out into the mild May night of Broadway. 
About them was a brightness as of day, but the heavy, 
crowding shadows were such as no day ever held. At 
the first crossing, Angela paused and turned and looked 
back, but the great white temple was lost in the pervading 
glare. Then they wandered on again, their eyes turned 
aloft to the amazing bright antics of words and fountains, 
automobiles and animate creatures performing against 
the back-drop of the sky. 

At last they arrived at the hotel. 

208 


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It was the third night since their marriage. 

Giorgio was unwontedly stimulated by the cocktails 
and by the little blonde girl; and that night Angela 
realized, for the first time, with terror, the intense pas¬ 
sion, the sensual grossness that lay hidden beneath her 
husband’s recent kindness. 


209 


0» XXII # 


On the following day Giorgio and Angela returned to 
the island. It was not a happy journey. Only four 
days ago Angela had been possessed of a great faith and 
hopefulness for the future. Now her hope was dead. 
She had come to know, in a clear flash of terrified under¬ 
standing, unmistakably and for the first time, the man 
who was her husband. On this journey that man said 
little to her. He had said, the night before, words that 
still rang in her ears—unforgettable words that had left 
her shamed and scarred, had robbed her of her virtue as 
a wife, and made her merely a partner of his vicious 
passion. His passion had scarred her physically; some 
substance of her being had actually been destroyed in 
that horrible hot fire; there were spots upon her face and 
upon her body where his kisses had burned, that tingled 
yet, and she was sure that her shame was visible to the 
world. 

The past was done—there was no possibility of return. 
Some essence of her life had been changed, as in a chemi¬ 
cal process; she could never be the same again. The 
future, too, seemed done—still-born, monstrous, hideous 
—and yet it lived, grotesque and shameful, always to be 
endured. 

From the mainland Giorgio telephoned that they were 
arriving, and when they landed from the little ferry, his 
210 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

Ford machine with the light truck body was at the wharf 
to meet them. The ride out to the Fist was made in si¬ 
lence. As the machine climbed out of the marshes into 
the settlement, the first thing that caught Giorgio’s eyes 
was his raw-looking new house, and the second thing 
was the ugly-looking steamer of the Fish Trust floating 
placidly upon the waters of the outer bay. 

All Giorgio’s energies rushed at once to a point focus¬ 
ing on the menace of that steamer’s presence. To combat 
that menace was not only his imperative responsibility, 
but his outstanding desire. He changed his clothes with¬ 
out delay and hurried down to his shack on the beach, 
to hear what news there might be, and to contrive, if 
possible, additional means of opposing that hovering foe. 

The news he heard was not reassuring. Rosario, 
Rosie’s father, whom he had left as foreman of his 
crews, reported that the steamer had arrived during the 
Sunday night after Giorgio had gone; that on Monday 
morning at daylight a crew from the steamer had begun 
the laying of traps; that half a dozen traps were already 
laid or were under construction; and that a small shack 
was being built, over on the seaward beach, to house 
the crew that would evidently remain to work the traps 
of the Trust. No, there had been no trouble of any sort; 
there had scarcely been communication between the men 
of the two gangs; but Rosario added that some of the 
new traps had been set down pretty close to Giorgio’s. 

Vinti at once started on a tour of inspection, taking 
two men to row him in one of the heavy, wide dories. 
They pulled, hour after hour, with their short, quick 
strokes, from trap to trap, and all about the great pound. 
Giorgio examined stays and moorings, and when he re- 
211 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
turned, long after midnight, he understood just what his 
situation was. He had seen only faint indications that 
the Trust intended to encroach upon him. The sea was 
free, he considered, and those other traps had as much 
right to a place as his had; but in two instances the 
Trust’s crew had laid their leaders closer to his than he 
liked, and outside his—so that, in that particular area, 
fish running in schools or ordinarily with the tide must 
necessarily be diverted to the Trust’s nets before reach¬ 
ing Giorgio’s leaders. 

It was a delicate situation; a dozen differences of 
opinion were possible regarding the rights of Giorgio and 
his competitor, a dozen arguments and excuses as to 
judgment and intent. Giorgio admitted to himself that 
in taking what he had wanted of the shore and waters 
by right of precedence, he had made the first move in 
this opening warfare. He felt he had now been attacked, 
but attacked with the most delicate strategy. 

He was afraid to do anything because, in view of the 
subtlety and cleverness of his opponent, there was dan¬ 
ger of putting himself in a ridiculous and untenable 
position; he was afraid not to do something because of 
the danger of the further operation of that subtle strategy. 
In short, he was afraid. He stood alone on the beach in 
the dark and confessed it to himself. He knew the 
enormous strength of the Trust, knew its tremendous 
power, all available to move as a unit and crush the life 
out of him. He could feel that crushing process instinc¬ 
tively now—the gentle, delicate pressure of that enormous, 
invisible body, capable, he was sure, of more than his 
imagination could suggest. 

212 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE & 

Giorgio’s mind leaped upon a nearly forgotten formula; 
he muttered under his breath, “Damned Yankees!” 

The phrase whispered into the darkness meant both 
more and less than it seemed to mean. For one thing, 
it was an echo from the past. In the days that had pre¬ 
ceded Giorgio’s prosperity in this new land, he had ap¬ 
plied the phrase to every obstacle that he had then en¬ 
countered, every staying gesture, every arresting inhibi¬ 
tion—everything, in short, that he didn’t like or didn’t 
understand, stirred in him a resentment that found ex¬ 
pression in that exclamation, amounting to a curse— 
“Damned Yankees!” That was his protest against all 
power, all pride and privilege, all good fortune of any 
appreciable amplitude enjoyed by others. 

But those resentments had all evaporated long ago. 
Giorgio had himself, since those old days, tasted of good 
fortune and power of a sort, had felt the thrill of pride 
in a measure that had been sufficient for his peace. He 
had, in fact, secured a considerable freedom from the 
arresting gestures and the hindering opposition of the 
Yankees, and now for more than fifteen years he had 
not uttered that phrase. 

On hearing himself utter it now his attention was 
pulled up short. It frightened him suddenly, for it 
seemed like a warning of his coming reversion to all the 
struggles and miseries of that former time. And it 
piqued the depths of his secret egotism, for he had more 
than once, in the recent years of prosperity, congratulated 
himself upon his likeness to the Americans. It had never 
occurred to him to become a national of the land of the 
free, yet he felt that he had caught something of the 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 
Americans’ large manner, their trick of making money, 
and their broad talent for material progress. Secretly 
Giorgio was rather proud of his Americanism. 

But now he saw suddenly that there was nothing Ameri¬ 
can about him; he lived in a tiny community of his own 
people; he had always done business, as far as possible, 
with men of his own nationality; as a fisherman he had 
worked at an immemorial calling of his race; if he had 
made money here in the United States, that was nothing 
but proof of the “freedom” that he used to hear so much 
shouting about in his youth, and always hated. 

He had years ago withdrawn from the more direct 
contest with the Yankees, because in that contest he was 
continually unsuccessful; he had withdrawn and found a 
way of his own, and had made success. He had with¬ 
drawn so far, in fact, that the land and waters of the 
Fist had seemed to him to be, not American, but Portu¬ 
guese. But he had had that all wrong. He was Portu¬ 
guese, not American; the land and waters were American, 
not Portuguese. Doubtless in the old days he had learned 
something of the Yankee manner and the Yankee method, 
but—he had withdrawn, and in withdrawing he had 
ceased to learn. Since then, while he had been progress¬ 
ing, the Americans had been progressing too—by leaps 
and bounds. They had, for instance, abandoned the 
crudities of competition in business and had created in¬ 
stead the subtle and immense strength of combinations; 
had welded the individual abilities of countless men into 
a machine, a weapon—some incomprehensible force for 
the accomplishment of their superhuman ambitions. 

Now Giorgio found himself alone, in competition with 
the Yankees again, alone before the Trust. He looked 
214 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
the chimera in the face. It was not American, though 
American-made. It was greater than any nation, for it 
had no prejudice of patriotism; it was greater than men, 
for it had no emotions; it was greater than man, for it 
was unified. It stood deliberately barring the way of 
Giorgio’s progress. He must take up again the struggle 
that he had escaped from long ago. Formerly it had 
been a struggle of achievement; now it was to be a strug¬ 
gle of preservation; and before the massed strength of his 
opponent, he perceived all his achieved pride and power 
to be insignificant, inadequate for the contest. 

At last he turned up the beach with weary steps, drag¬ 
ging his stick as he went. He wandered along the road, 
past the house where his wife slept, and came at last to 
his gaunt new house showing pale in the dim light. 
Giorgio stared at the outlined monstrosity, wondered that 
he had once been enthusiastic for its erection, remembered 
what he had intended it to be—the crowning glory of 
his pride. He moved about it, stumbling over rubbish- 
heaps, observing from every angle its crude resemblance 
to a dwelling. It appeared larger than it would actually 
be when completed. The flashlight he had used in the 
inspection of his traps was still in his pocket. He took 
it out and flashed the beam of its light about, seeking an 
entrance to the building, then mounted heavily the plank 
that slanted up from the ground and led through an aper¬ 
ture between two joists where some time a door would 
swing. 

As he moved, perturbed and unhappy, through the 
spaces that would be rooms, he wondered vaguely who 
would ever occupy these chambers. The house seemed 
like a ruin—vacant, meaningless, impossible. It was as 
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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
though the reasons for its erection, if there had ever been 
any reasons, had ceased to exist. Well, the reasons had 
all existed in Giorgio’s brain; the erection of the house 
had depended upon Giorgio’s own intent. Ah, yes! He 
had built it to be the crowning glory of his life, the monu¬ 
ment of his complete and proud success; but he saw now 
that his life and his proud success had been illusions; he 
had imagined them to be important, and they were noth¬ 
ing; the house was nothing but the symbol of his folly. 

“Damned Yankees!” 

He moved to one of the oblong window spaces that 
showed pale in the surrounding darkness, and looked 
out over the little settlement of the Fist. It seemed to 
him then the most pitiful place he had ever seen—those 
harsh, ugly houses, that drab, useless existence. Yet he 
had been content here for years, and here he had built 
that incredible illusion of his pride. 

He did not stir for a long time, but stood, feeling an¬ 
cient and alien, and watched without seeing them the 
barely discernible lights on that hovering ship in the 
bay. Incredible illusion! It had deceived him through 
the years—he had deceived himself through the years. 
Like a drug, it had filled him, body and soul, with the 
glamour of dreams, had induced him to build this house 
and to take a wife. 

His wife! Giorgio knew promptly, clearly, that he had 
not wanted a wife. He had somehow been misled. No, 
he did not want her any more than he wanted this house. 
And she did not want him. No. When he had gone to 
her as a husband, in his true guise, revealing himself 
without pretence, as a man should be able to do with his 
wife, she had withdrawn, cowered away from him in 
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AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
loathing and disgust. That had hurt him strangely; it 
had been a revealing episode—it had been the first of 
these successive blows at his splendid illusion. 

Neither he nor Angela loved the thing the other had 
proved to be, and now there was no escape for either of 
them. Their only course seemed to be to compromise, to 
bear, on the best terms they might be able to hit upon, 
the unlovely situation in which they found themselves. 
But Giorgio could find no basis for such a compromise. 

He did not blame his wife and he did not blame him¬ 
self for their mutual incompatibility, yet his mind 
demanded that someone be blamed, and it turned on the 
old woman, Angela’s mother. He laughed sourly as he 
thought of her. There, he told himself, had been a 
desire and an illusion equal to his own. The old woman 
had been capable and clever, as he, in his way, had been, 
but not quite so clever as he, for she was dead—or (who 
could tell?) perhaps more clever, more wise, for she was 
dead—had died in the full madness of her ridiculous am¬ 
bition. 

That was it, Giorgio said to himself, nodding. He did 
not object to the illusions—any of them—if they could 
only have lasted till he was done with them. But to 
lose them! To go on without them! 

The grey of morning was growing in the sky. Giorgio 
roused and felt the chill wind upon his face. The stars 
were fading. He could discern a light over at the foot of 
the bluff where Santos’ Joe was already going out to 
the morning’s milking. Giorgio turned away from the 
window and fumbled his way through the house, smelt 
the acrid stench of mortar and lumber, descended the 
slanting plank, and went home. 

217 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 

The Grania house, now his temporary abode, was dark 
and silent. Angela was sleeping. Mr. Grania was not 
yet up. Giorgio had come in for what should be his 
first night’s sleep under that roof. It was different from 
what he had expected. Suddenly he felt homeless, out¬ 
cast—as if he had been shorn of all the appurtenances, 
interests and relations of his recent splendid existence and 
was doomed to go alone for ever in a stark world, miser¬ 
able and filled with fears, stalked by the constant menace 
of the Trust and by the accusing eyes of his pitiful wife. 

He did not go in to his wife where she slept, but 
moved quietly along the dark hall to the room at the 
front of the house, and threw himself down, in his clothes, 
on the old horse-hair sofa which filled the space where 
Mrs. Grania’s coffin had stood. 


j 


218 


^ XXIII ^ 


Giorgio waked at ten o’clock that morning to the calm 
acceptance of his fate. During the hours of sleep his 
subconsciousness, surveying the field of his defeat, found 
means to assure him that he had not encountered dis¬ 
aster. All the dark colours that he had seen his career 
painted in were there, truly enough, but he grasped that 
they were not, for the most part, new colours. His 
struggle with the Fish Trust was a new affair, of course. 
It had given a large new background to the present 
phases of his existence, but it had not yet in any manner 
changed the character of that existence; it had, in fact, 
merely given it a different aspect, a different relief. To 
everyone but Giorgio himself, the new house was the 
crowning glory of a commendable success. His neigh¬ 
bours looked upon him and applauded his pride. 
Where, then, was his failure? His Americanism? Well, 
yes; most of the inhabitants of the Fist would have been 
puzzled and amused at his notions about being like the 
Americans. They all copied and imitated American ways 
and manners, but it was only the surface manners 
that they thus imitated. A deeper understanding 
would come only with the new point of view of 
a later generation. If his neighbours had actually come 
upon Giorgio’s pride in his Americanism, they would 
have put their fingers upon it at once as a self-deception, 
219 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
and would have promptly proved him Portuguese. No, 
they all saw him as he was, and regardless of any different 
thing he might have thought he was or wished to be, they 
applauded him for that. His injured pride took firm hold 
of this at last, as of an assurance. He must, he saw, con¬ 
tinue to keep up appearances. 

As to his relation to his wife, his neighbours would 
have laughed at that too, if they had known. Any man 
of common sense ought to be able to manage his affairs 
with his wife—either by establishing his authority or by 
submitting to hers. Giorgio could have had any woman 
there was, and he had taken the one he had wanted. 
People felt, secretly, that he had chosen the best of the lot. 
What more was there? Just a little management. . . . 

He found that he had determined in the night that 
for the present he would make no move against the Trust. 
For the present his job was to work and watch and wait. 
He would make a strong and consistent sort of passive 
resistance, maintain his position, ignore the presence of 
those others, and sell every fish that came to his nets 
at the best price obtainable. 

Presently he heaved himself up from the sofa and, feel¬ 
ing a little stiff from his rest on that narrow couch, he 
went into the kitchen to shave and wash up. Angela, 
who knew from the presence of his hat and stick in the 
corner that he was in the house, had hot water ready 
for him and a clean towel over the back of a chair by the 
sink. At once on his appearance she began without a 
word to prepare his breakfast. At first Giorgio felt in¬ 
clined to reject her every gesture of service, but there was 
something novel and satisfying in the simple ministra¬ 
tions of his wife that he could not deny himself the pleas- 
220 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
ure of. He shaved in silence and washed noisily, then 
dried his face and neck, his arms and hands, with a dozen 
large flourishes of the clean white towel. He threw the 
used towel over the back of the chair where he had found 
it, and then he stood embarrassed, needing a comb and 
knowing that he had none. He had used Angela’s comb 
during their honeymoon. Angela perceived his need 
(Giorgio was amazed at her perceptiveness, of which this 
was one evidence) and led the way into the room off the 
kitchen which had been given up by Mr. Grania for use 
by Angela and her husband. 

"You’ll have t’ use mine,” she said simply, without 
looking at him, and she held it out for him to take. 

Giorgio, without a word, combed his hair before the 
mirror in his wife’s room, and returned to the kitchen for 
his breakfast. 

The breakfast was good and Giorgio ate heartily, for 
he was hungry, but he ate with a critical appetite, test¬ 
ing the qualities of this first meal prepared by his wife. 
His judgment was all-approving, except that he liked a 
little more salt, and that was there at his hand in a small 
white saucer. 

It was a good breakfast, he said to himself as he pro¬ 
ceeded, and his mind became occupied with the aspects 
of his relation to this girl who prepared it. He compared 
her, crudely but without levity, to other housekeepers 
who had served him, but one division of his mind vaguely 
rejected the idea of such a comparison and struggled to 
formulate a defence of this woman, his wife. She was 
his wife, and he became sensible of a thought, dimly 
stirring in him, that on that account no other housekeeper 
he had ever had could be compared to her. She was his 
221 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
wife! That was, at last, the main motif of her defence, 
emerging from his consideration of her status; nothing 
more than the plain statement of that fact —she was his 
wife! 

Yes, well, was she? 

He left the house very soon, and all that day he went 
about his work unconsciously thinking of her, of his 
relation to her, of the terms of his necessary compromise 
with her. The phrase, She was his wifel kept repeating 
itself over and over, as in a dream, and sometimes ris¬ 
ing into his conscious mind. It seemed repeatedly to be 
stated with new vehemence, new significance. 

Then he was pulled up short in the act of lighting his 
pipe, at perceiving a second thought that was rising, 
like a visible figure, out of his subconsciousness. Giorgio 
was perched on the bow of a dory at the water’s edge, and 
the wind was blowing stiff along the sunlit beach. It 
was necessary for him carefully to cup the light of the 
match in his hands. From habit his hands protected the 
little flame for a moment, but he made no attempt to 
light the pack of his pipe, for all his faculties were in¬ 
tently concentrated on that figure rising out of his inner 
mind. Unconsciously he threw the match into the water, 
took the pipe from his mouth, and sat looking at that 
vision—that figure—no, there were two figures—two 
young men—his sons. 

Giorgio sat there minute after minute, gazing out 
across the bay as across a space of time, and he neither 
saw nor heard his men about their work. Instead, he 
saw two babies lying helpless in a cradle; two dark-eyed 
lads in knickerbockers, playing on the sands; two older 
laughing boys who called to each other as they fished 
222 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
from separate dories; two youths who puffed at pipes 
and went striding along the beach in high boots; two 
young men, named Vinti, strong, dark-haired Americans, 
who talked with the voices of masters—who were mas¬ 
ters of sea and shore. 

Giorgio waked from his vision into a sentimental mood. 
He had seen his sons, who now would never be born. 
He yearned for them, but they were doomed to take their 
places in the long procession of his unborn children. 
Giorgio was again overwhelmed by a sense of the wasted 
years. And the future doomed to sterility! And yet . . . 
It all depended on the terms of the compromise he could 
make with his wife. Yes! He yearned for his sons. 

He emerged from his sentimental state forthwith— 
emerged to a sort of gaiety, for he told himself that a 
way could be found. Laughing at himself, he acknowl¬ 
edged that he had been a fool to play at pride and to 
make a pretence of Americanism; but he assured himself 
that he was not yet dead, and he might yet have some¬ 
thing to be proud of. “My sons!” he whispered, with 
shining eyes; and then he laughed softly to himself. 
“My sons!” 

Toward noon his foreman, Rosario, came to him to re¬ 
port on the morning’s work, and Giorgio took the man by 
the arm and led him away down the beach, listening 
while the other talked. When Rosario had finished, 
Giorgio turned to him. 

“You got a son?” he asked. 

Rosario looked at him with startled eyes. 

“I had,” he said simply. 

“Yes, I know.” Then, gripping Rosario’s arm tightly, 
Giorgio said, “Listen! I seen him in N’York.” 

223 


** AN ISLAND CHRONICLE Jt 

Rosario began to tremble with eagerness. '‘Where? 
When? Manuel? In N’York? Ah, you sure ’twas 
him? My boy! He ran away from home! I don't 
know why. Tell me—he is well?" 

Giorgio told of his encounter with Manuel. He re¬ 
frained from stressing the presence of the little blonde 
girl, but he told of the boy’s good clothes, his good looks, 
and the good time he was having—the good time they had 
had together. “I knew," he concluded, "you’d be glad 
t’ hear about your son." 

He spoke as if he understood perfectly how a man 
felt about his son; as one of a confraternity speaks to 
another—casually about esoteric things. 

"Yes," Rosario remarked dully, "I’m glad t’ hear. He’s 
a good boy—Manuel. I want him t’ have a good time, 
but I wish I had him t’ home." The old man spoke wist¬ 
fully. 

They turned up the beach together and Giorgio felt 
a deep sympathy for this man who had lost his son. "It 
mus’ be pretty bad," he thought, "t’ have your son run 
away from you!" Actually, he didn’t see why Manuel 
should ever come back. 

Rosario was preoccupied. He said he’d go up to the 
house to dinner, if the boss didn’t mind. He hadn’t 
been at home for nearly a week, and Rosie was all alone 
up there. Things had been too exciting for him to leave 
the men. . . . And Giorgio, filled with an unusual and 
pleasant sympathy, told him to go ahead; said he needn’t 
come down for the night shift if he wanted to sleep. 

Rosario nodded, murmured "All right," and went off 
up the beach. 


224 


<5* XXIV ^ 


Giorgio remained on duty himself for the work that 
night, went out alone in a dory and hovered about the 
edge of the lantern glow, watched the cataracts of fish 
tumble and slide, like shining waterfalls, from the heavy 
nets, watched the men straining at their work. All 
around and outside the labouring movement of his crew 
was a great silence, a great peace; the Fist rose like a 
shadow of enduring strength; stars glimmered in an 
eternity of assurance; and out there somewhere in the 
oblivion of hovering Time, Giorgio was aware that the 
souls of his sons were waiting, watching, trembling with 
eagerness to be born into the world of men. 

When the work was finished he went home, just before 
dawn, went into the quiet dark house and sat down in 
the kitchen, outside the room where Angela was sleeping. 
His mind was full of the vision of his sons, and yet he 
hesitated to open that door—hesitated in a new mood 
of diffidence to approach his wife, grown suddenly con¬ 
scious of the grossness of their late physical encounter. 
He must wait; he must speak to her of his sons, so that 
she would understand; he could not risk her mistaking 
him—could not risk again rousing her loathing and her 
terror. 

He rose, at last, tired and heavy with sleepiness, went 
along the hall to the room at the front of the house, 
and slept on the horse-hair sofa. 

225 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE J* 

It was noon when he waked, and again Angela served 
him at breakfast. She was aloof; he was aware of her 
aloofness and of some tangible quality in her that he 
had never sensed before—some gentleness, some delicate, 
tender, appealing thing that made him seem stupid and 
heavy beside her, yet made him feel, too, that she was 
dependent upon him because he was just what he was. 

There was that appeal, drawing him to her; there was 
also a barrier, keeping him away. Her silence indicated 
the presence of the barrier; his own inability to find the 
right thing to say also indicated it. They did not look 
into each other’s eyes. They did not face each other 
bravely or hopefully. Giorgio knew that it was Angela's 
barrier of self-protection that stood between them. He 
had caused its erection and he must bring about its 
removal. He did not know how to do it, but he wanted 
to do it. For the present he could only be gentle with 
his wife, hoping that she might lose her fear of him and 
be reassured. It would take time, and he was impatient 
for his sons’ sake; but before that vision of his sons his 
wife became suddenly, strangely dear to him, lovely and 
mysterious, taking on somehow a part of the unreal re¬ 
ality of those strong young men who went on the beach 
with commanding eyes—those young men who would love 
her and save her from all pain and indignity, whether of 
his infliction or another’s. 

As Giorgio started for the door at last, his mind was 
still full of these sensed significances. Angela arrested 
him by asking, nervously, “Are you cornin’ home 
to-night?” 

He was confused at her question—confused at the 

226 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
sound of her voice and confused at her question because, 
with his mind full of thoughts of his sons, he wondered 
if the question could possibly mean more than it seemed 
to mean. But looking at his wife—a swift glance—he 
perceived that she was thinking of her housekeeping, 
and he replied at once, "Yes. I'll be home all night, 
prob’ly." 

'Til fix a bed in the front room/’ she said, "if you 
want t’ sleep there/' 

Giorgio watched her as she busied herself about clear¬ 
ing the table, and he was swept by a swift impulse. He 

was on the point of telling her that he didn't want to 

sleep in the front room; but he had, as promptly and 
swiftly, a vision of her turning upon him a quick, startled 
face of fear. So what he said was, in a murmur, "All 
right." Then he went out of the house. 

He had expected that Rosario wouM be at the beach to 
manage the morning shift of men who packed and shipped 
the day’s fish, rounded up the lobster-pots, replaced nets, 
and did the hundred jobs on gear and tackle that can 

best be done in daylight; but when he arrived at the 

shack, he found that Rosario had not come down. The 
necessary work had been done, but Giorgio was, never¬ 
theless, angry. What did Rosario think? he wondered. 
Did he expect his boss to do his work for him? If he 
wanted his job, he’d better attend to it; if he didn’t, 
well! . . . Giorgio had a notion of discharging his fore¬ 
man at once—had a notion of sending one of the men to 
Rosario’s house to say that the foreman could sleep a 
week if he wanted to, he was fired. But he soon became 
more sensible and he didn’t send the message. Rosario 
227 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
was a good man. Perhaps something had happened— 
perhaps there was something the matter. Well, if there 
was, he ought to send word, Giorgio grumbled. Finally 
he decided to wait and see. 

When the men^were called in for supper, Rosario had 
not yet shown up. Giorgio went in and ate with his 
crew in surly silence. Then, later, as the darkness began 
to gather and the night shift began to prepare for work, 
Giorgio took his stick, strolled up the beach, and started 
toward the house of his foreman. 

The road through the settlement was already dark. 
Lights shone in only two or three of the houses. Peo¬ 
ple were going to bed, for these were busy days for the 
farmers and they were up early in the mornings. The 
Rosario house, when he came to it, was dark like the 
night. Giorgio went around to the rear, expecting to 
find a light in the kitchen, and as he went his anger rose 
against this man he had come to see—against this man’s 
unconcern for him and his affairs. There was no light 
anywhere in the house. He rapped on the back door with 
his stick. After a moment he rapped again, and very 
soon a light was struck within. Immediately after 
Rosie opened the door for him. 

At sight of Rosie, Vinti was shocked and angered. 
Coming along the road, he had anticipated an obsequious 
reception from his guilty foreman, had seen himself re¬ 
ducing the man to a state of abject subservience by a 
cold statement of indubitable facts—facts about his fore¬ 
man’s job and what his foreman had better do if he 
wanted to hold it. Now, at sight of Rosie, he trembled 
with an intenser passion, for the appearance of this girl 
instead of her father was an act of effrontery, an insult. 

228 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE 

For a moment he couldn’t speak, his anger choked 
him; and Rosie stood there, maliciously amused to see 
him before her door, waiting for him to say whatever 
he chose. But he didn’t speak as the moments passed, 
he couldn’t; and at last she remarked airily, "Oh, it’s 
Mr. Vinti!” 

"Where’s Rosario? Where’s your father?” Giorgio de¬ 
manded, gripping his stick. 

"My father?” Rosie repeated quietly. "Come in an’ 
I’ll show you.” 

Show him! Show him! Giorgio suddenly wondered 
if something had happened to his foreman, wondered 
what it was she was going to show him; and as he won¬ 
dered, he stepped into the kitchen. 

Rosie wore an old brown dress comfortably open at 
the throat. Her hair was smooth and full of lustres. 
She moved easily, confidently, away from the door and 
set a chair for Vinti. Then, without a word, she went 
out of the room, leaving him alone. 

He watched her fade out of the light through the 
doorway, and he suddenly recalled their last encounter 
together on that night, months ago, when she had come 
to his house on the beach to propose that he make her 
his wife. He recalled how they had quarrelled, how she 
had rejected his alternative proposal. 

Rosie returned to the room in the midst of his memo¬ 
ries, holding in her hand a slip of paper. She handed 
this to Giorgio with a large free movement of her arm, 
and it was not until his fingers closed upon the paper 
that his mind cleared. He held the paper close to the 
lamp and with difficulty read the crabbed writing that 
it bore: 


229 


j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 

“Rosie—I am gon away to fin Manuel I aint comin back til 
I fin him. Vinti seen him in New York Tell V ware I an 
gon too.” 

Giorgio laughed out at the irony of it. He had robbed 
himself of a foreman by his fool talk about the fore¬ 
man’s fool son. Fool talk, yes; for what did he care 
about Rosario’s son? Or about Rosario, either—except 
as a workman? He grunted and looked at Rosie. 

“When did he go?” he asked. 

Rosie shrugged. “That’s all I know,” she said. “He 
was gone this mornin’.” 

A fundamental antipathy existed between Giorgio and 
this girl; they could not meet without an exhibition of 
antagonism. Now at sight of him Rosie’s smouldering 
hatred rose and governed her. He had rejected her and 
chosen that other woman for his wife; she could never 
forgive him for that. 

“This is foolishness!” Giorgio exclaimed. “He’ll never 
find him. He don’t know enough t’ look in the right 
place.” 

Rosie shrugged again. “It leaves you without a fore¬ 
man,” she said, and she smiled as she said it. 

“Yes, for a time,” Giorgio answered, “but I c’n work.” 

“For a time?” 

Giorgio looked at her quickly. “Why, he’ll come 
back, o’ course,” he suggested. 

“Maybe,” she agreed. “But he says he won’t come 
back till he finds Manuel, an’ you say he’ll never find 
him. P’raps he'll change his mind, though.” 

Vinti looked at her with curiosity. “It leaves you all 
alone here,” he said. 


230 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE & 

"Oh, I’m used t’ bein’ alone. You’ve kep’ him away 
most o’ the time.” 

"But this is different. Did he leave you any money?” 

"I don’t know,” she smiled. "I ain’t been in to the 
bank.” 

She was light about it all. She did not seem to be 
impressed or worried. Giorgio could not understand 
these Rosarios. He shook his head. It was a queer 
breed. 

"What makes ’em all run away?” he asked. 

"I’m sure I don’t know,” she said casually, "unless 
they run away from me.” 

Giorgio nodded. He looked up at her quickly, sharply. 
"You ain’t married yet!” he exclaimed. 

"No. An’ you are!” she countered smoothly. 

She laughed as she said it, with the air of one who has 
fortunately escaped a catastrophe suffered by one’s 
friend, for whom, under the circumstances, one has no 
sympathy. Her laughter and her manner struck into 
Giorgio—irritated him, hurt him, made him want to 
strike back at her. She seemed insignificant to him; 
yet she hurt his pride. In a flash he felt that she knew 
all about his present unfortunate relations with his wife— 
felt that she sensed it with her woman’s intuition, and 
knew. He seemed to see that she was herself glad to have 
escaped being his wife. He saw her, in fact, standing 
aloof and superior now, pitying the woman who had not 
escaped that fate, and very proud of her own uncom¬ 
promised freedom. 

The situation was, for Giorgio, maddening. He re¬ 
membered advising Rosie to remain free, and she had 
accepted his advice. Now, at her exhibition of pride in 

231 


* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
her uncompromised freedom, he was envious of her. He 
was not free himself; it maddened him unaccountably. 
In effect Rosie had sneered at him and his wife, and he 
would have given much at the moment to render her in¬ 
capable of sneers like that. He wondered why he had 
kept silent about her visit to him in the night. That 
silence had been a mistake, he saw, for women like Rosie 
were only safe when kept in their subordinate place. He 
wanted to put her in her place now, assuring himself that 
it was not for her to be proud in the presence of him or 
his. 

He said nothing, but stood and looked at her with an 
intent voluptuous look, gazed full into her face, let his 
eyes wander up and down and all over her body—slowly, 
appraisingly—till they returned to her face, where they 
rested. He had the immediate satisfaction of seeing the 
blood mount hotly over her uncovered throat and cheeks; 
he knew that she understood the insult of his scrutiny. 
He turned away with a chuckle and remarked, “You ain’t 
been t’ see me lately.” 

He had effectively struck at Rosie’s pride. She thought 
of many things in that minute of his scrutiny, chief 
among which was a similar long look that her brother 
Manuel had bestowed upon her with a cool and coarse 
suggestiveness. Her next remark was a remark of self- 
defence. 

“Marriage ain’t made you any better, has it?” 

“Better!” he cried, his self-esteem now bolstered up 
again. “Better! How could it? There was never any¬ 
thin’ the matter with me!” 

“Your wife mus’ be a fool t’ let you go on thinkin’ so,” 
she retorted. 


232 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 

It was like the cut of a whip for Giorgio, and it left him 
tingling with angry pain. It was too sharp with truth— 
his wife had not let him go on thinking so. But he 
paused before he spoke. 

“Mrs. Vinti needn’t bother you an’ I,” he said. 

Rosie laughed, knowing that she had scored; and yet 
her attention, in the midst of her satisfaction, was caught 
by Giorgio’s remark. The words had for her, vaguely, a 
double meaning. Just what their suggestion of a sugges¬ 
tion was she could not at once determine, but it was there, 
she told herself. Perhaps he had not meant it, but she 
had caught it, nevertheless, and with it she had caught 
an idea. 

She said nothing, for her mind was too tensely occu¬ 
pied with the significance of that phrase, “Mrs. Vinti 
needn’t bother you an’ I.” She stood looking at Giorgio, 
and he waited for her to strike again; but she said 
nothing. 

He stirred at last. “Well, I got t’ go,” he said, taking 
up his hat and stick. “Tell your father, when he comes, 

I want t’ see him right away.” 

He went out without waiting for further civilities. She 
made no motion to stay him, but let him go, let him open 
and close the door himself. 


233 


^ XXV ^ 


Soon after Giorgio’s departure Rosie went to bed and lay 
awake in the still darkness; before her mind there un¬ 
folded a panorama of events that had touched her and 
stirred her in the recent months. In this review she 
beheld outstanding the incidents of Manuel’s departure, 
of her father’s disappearance; of her visit to Giorgio’s 
house and his visit to her house; of Joe’s package; of her 
relations with Angela. The persons nearest to her seemed 
to have touched her most lightly, and now they interested 
her least. These others—Giorgio, Joe and Angela—had 
affected her deeply, had each left a mark upon her, had 
still the power to stir her emotions. The strands of 
those three lives had become inextricably entangled with 
the strand of her life; and the strand most entangled 
with her own, the strand most constricting, most hateful, 
was the strand of Angela. 

Rosie grew hot with the bitterness of her hatred as she 
thought how this other woman had crossed and recrossed 
upon her way, always to her detriment, her pain and her 
loss. She was aware that she—Rosie—had never, never 
for a moment, actually hurt that other woman. She 
seemed, in fact, incapable of touching her; for though 
she had struck back once, in her affair with Joe, she had 
not then been able to reach. In her affair with Joe it 
would have completed the splendour and the satisfaction 
of success to know that in winning him she had taken 
234 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
possession of the man who, to Angela, was the most 
precious thing in the world. But she had missed that 
and all other satisfaction in the event, and her failure to 
hurt Angela had been but an insignificant portion of 
Rosie's resulting pain. 

But now . . . 

Rosie lay and contemplated another blow. If struck, 
it would be a blow direct, with all her energies, all her 
strength, all her life put heartily into it. There would, 
this time, be no love of her own to deflect it, no sentiment 
behind it but hatred. She would put into it all she had 
and all she was, and though it would never hurt Angela 
enough, she was sure that it would hurt. 

Yet with all her hearty good will to strike, she might 
never get the chance. It depended on Giorgio. He was 
to be her weapon. But would he let her use him for a 
weapon? There was his long scrutiny, and there was 
his remark, “Mrs. Vinti needn't bother you an’ I." It 
all depended on what those two things could be made to 
mean. It depended on Giorgio, but she must find the 
means to make him compliant. She thought, tentatively, 
that she might go to him for money—perhaps he owed 
her father money—he had mentioned money himself. 
When she had last approached him ... He had men¬ 
tioned money then. 

Rosie saw that if she actually succeeded in reaching 
Angela and hurting her, with Giorgio for her weapon, 
she would be unable to stay on at the Fist. Joe would 
despise her for ever, and she would at once become de¬ 
based, notorious, outcast. Giorgio was the most terrible 
weapon she could use—two-edged—but the only weapon 
there was. 


235 


jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 

Rosie did not waver in her desire to strike the blow. 
She desired intensely to strike; if she succeeded she 
would pay gladly; she would go away. She had wanted 
to be married, and she had always felt instinctively that 
that ambition would be lost amid the conflicting tempta¬ 
tions and diversions of a city; but now she abandoned 
her ideal of marriage. That was the price she was will¬ 
ing to pay for a blow at Angela. With a triumphant 
sense of new courage, she accepted the prospect of escape 
into an area of larger conflict. She had been afraid of 
men, had seen herself as the victim of men; but, suddenly 
now, she was not afraid of men—she despised them. 

In that moment Rosie reverted to her true type, threw 
off the restricting glamours of a culture to which she had 
not been truly trained up, returned to the normal, un¬ 
trammelled freedom of her predatory nature. 

In that moment she forgot many things that she really 
knew. She felt strong, and she would not see that in 
escaping into the world she would be compassing her own 
doom. Men had shown her with their eyes—Vinti had 
shown her, Joe had shown her, even her brother Manuel 
had shown her—that her destiny was bound up in the 
large handsomeness of her body. Men desired her, but 
they would not marry her—they did not love her. Now 
she was eager to fly out into the world that would show 
her no pity—the world that would invite her into its 
by-ways with the countless long scrutinies of men, and 
she would meet, greet, court those looks, till at last 
she should be destroyed by them—her destiny fulfilled. 
She knew from experience, but she would not now see, 
that her body was the captain of her soul, her virtue the 
plaything of her passions. But she put all cautions, all 
236 


£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
inhibitions aside, staked everything on the indulgence 
of her hatred. 

That was the measure of her hatred; that was the test 
of her character and her strength. 

In the meantime (so definitely had the Fates agreed 
upon Rosie’s doom) Giorgio was mentally coming on 
to meet her. He would be the weapon of her hatred. 
He would be used, without knowing that he was being 
used, to wound his wife and to drive Rosie to her de¬ 
termined end. Without knowing? Well, he was to be 
lured and lulled by a sense of dominance—dominance of 
Rosie’s pride—and in all essentials, so far as he could 
see, he was to escape all harm. The wounds he was 
to inflict on two women did not seem very important 
incidents to this man. To this man—this weapon— 
wounded women had been incidents in the past—he was 
accustomed to such wounding. 

Nevertheless, it was not without a mental struggle that 
he came to the point of being used. Giorgio had a score 
of difficult things to settle in his mind. He had, first, 
to eliminate that vision of his sons, but he found that 
they could not be eliminated, could not be deliberately 
put aside. Whereupon, to get rid of them temporarily, he 
took his first mental anaesthetic, directing the young 
men’s attention and his own to his wife who loathed and 
feared him. “I can’t hurry her,” he said to them and 
to himself. “I can’t hurry Angela. She’s been scared. 

I got t’ give Tier time t’ forget, an’ then I got t’ talk t’ her 
so’s she’ll understand. It’s too bad there’s got t’ be a 
delay. But it’s all right. It’ll take a little time, that’s 
all. But I can’t hurry her. We got t’ wait.” 

That was self-induced anaesthesia, the deliberate elimi- 
237 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
nation of an impediment, procrastination for a purpose. 

But his sons gave voice: “Is this the way to treat us, 
then? Is this the way to win the woman’s confidence?” 

Promptly, then, came forward the blustering defender 
of the wife he had just implicated, used as a screen. His 
wife had been insulted! That Rosario girl had laughed 
at his marriage, had exhibited pride in her uncompro¬ 
mised freedom; she had gone so far as to say, in so many 
words, that his wife must be a fool. Well, he wouldn’t 
stand by and see his wife insulted like that. No, sir! 
An’ this Rosie! Who was she? A brazen woman who 
had come to him one night, asking him to marry her. 
He’d refused, of course—there was only one wife for him! 
He thought he knew how to humble Rosie’s pride. Yes, 
he thought he knew! He didn’t like it, but a man must 
defend his wife, and you couldn’t handle a woman like 
you could a man. No, there was a different way for 
women. 

That was all self-induced anaesthesia—the anaesthesia 
of self-righteousness. Giorgio was, technically, about to 
defend his wife by ruining her enemy. 

Damn these Rosarios, anyway! A queer breed! One 
of the queer things about them was that they were all 
mixed up in Giorgio’s trouble with his wife—at the root 
of it. There was the father—crazy! If he’d stayed at 
home and attended to his business, Giorgio would never 
have gone to his damn house, would never have seen 
his damn daughter, wouldn’t have heard her insult his 
wife, wouldn’t have to defend his wife against her now. 
She was crazy to insult him, anyway—her father’s boss. 
Crazy! The crazy daughter of a crazy father! Crazy 
sister of a crazy brother! Well, no, the boy wasn’t such 
238 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
a fool! He knew what he wanted. He seemed to be 
having a good time there in N’York with the little blonde 
girl. Ah, yes; the little blonde girl! Giorgio remem¬ 
bered her. In fact he remembered her very well—she was 
so slim and smooth, so distant and unresponsive—she 
didn’t even respond to the drinks. Somehow she worked 
him up. He remembered he’d wanted to crush her in his 
arms, had wanted to make her respond to pain, if 
she wouldn't respond to anything else—he’d wanted to 
make her cry out, and then comfort her. Stimulating, 
she was. She and the drinks had been too much for him 
that night. 

Giorgio’s face, reflecting his thoughts, exhibited an ab¬ 
sorbed bright eagerness; but now his eyes went hard. 
Here, he realized, was the root of his trouble with his 
wife. Too much stimulant! And a Rosario had been 
responsible for that. Those drinks and Manuel’s little 
blonde friend . . . Damn these Rosarios! He’d still like 
to crush the little blonde girl for her part in this trouble, 
but these Rosarios—well, Rosie could pay for all! 

The mental anaesthetic of justification was thus ad¬ 
ministered; full guilt was thus fixed upon the enemy; the 
touch of clear righteousness was thus added to his cause. 

There were other phases of his mental adjustment, all 
readily translatable into terms similar to these. They 
fluctuated somewhat, shifted, faded, and brightened, like 
the ebb and flow of an aurora borealis weaving across the 
sky of his mind, climbing, creeping, flaming upward 
toward Rosie as the focal point. 

What had actually moved Giorgio to become the 
weapon for Rosie’s blow was that long scrutiny with 
which he had undertaken to insult the girl. The incep- 
239 


& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
tion in his mind of that mode of insult had been spon¬ 
taneous, and his idea had been, simply, to humble her 
pride. In his look, when he first flashed it upon her, 
there was no desire whatever. But in the process he be¬ 
held the contours and surfaces of Rosie’s splendid body, 
indicated and suggested, her bare throat, the rich colour 
of her neck, her shining eyes, her gleaming hair; and 
something waked in him, stirred, rose rampant. He was 
filled with desire, as he had often been before. 

From what was, for Giorgio, a splendid height, where 
he had begun to perceive and understand his wife, and 
where he had beheld a vision of his sons, he sank to the 
plane of his old carnal desire. The fall was not lightly 
taken. He was obliged to give hostages to his conscience; 
and that had never happened before. 

As he returned to the beach alone in the dark, he 
felt, somehow, that between him and Rosie there was an 
affinity, and though it occurred to him that it was only 
an affinity of hatred, he knew that there was something 
other than that on his side. Some day, he told himself, 
they would fly together instead of flying apart—they 
would fly together, if only to destroy each other. He was 
now ready for that encounter, and he wondered how she 
would meet him. 

When, on the following night, he went again to the 
Rosario house, ostensibly to inquire about his foreman, 
he went, though anaesthetized, not quite easy in his mind, 
not quite assured of his immunity from consequences. 
He might actually then have been put off, rebuffed, dis¬ 
suaded. But he was not dissuaded—was not even put off. 
Rosie was waiting for him. He found her no longer 
aggressive, no longer insulting. He played his cards of 
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& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
suggestion deftly, he thought—finessing, leading, passing 
one trick and taking another, until he found at last that 
he had won his game. 

On her part Rosie played with equal skill, took as many 
tricks as he, and counting up her score finally, she found 
that she had won her game. 

Actually, they had been playing into each other’s 
hands; they had been partners together; there were no 
opponents present. They clutched at their prizes. Rosie 
was to strike her blow at Angela and proceed to fulfil 
her destiny. Giorgio was to render the girl incapable 
of ever insulting him or his wife again, and was to have 
the last flashing adventure of his life. 

Meanwhile, in the room at the front of her fathers 
house, Angela stood by the bed she had made up for her 
husband, as arranged between them. There was a fatal 
juxtaposition between the window of that room and the 
back door of the Rosario house—just the right angle 
for observation; Angela, looking out, observed Rosie ad¬ 
mitting her husband through that doorway, where she 
had formerly seen her admit Joe, and already she suf¬ 
fered from her wound. 

The weeks passed slowly. Giorgio never used that bed 
in the front room. Angela gazed at it from time to 
time—it was the symbol of her deep wound. ‘What are 
you doin’ there!” she cried, again and again, on seeing her 
husband at Rosie’s door; but she knew what he was 
doing—was able to name her wound, and felt the pain 
of it. 

Her body didn’t suffer; her body was content Her 
mind suffered; every thought moved in the dimness of a 
great grey shadow. But her spirit—that element of her 
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j* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
being that had aspired and hoped—suffered in an agony 
of despair. Her aspirations had come to nothing; her 
hopes were dead. From a present state of desperation she 
looked forward to a future as stark as a withered field. 
And the past—she could not look back at the past at all; 
that pain was more than she could bear. 


242 


XXVI # 


There came then, toward mid-June, a period of extraor¬ 
dinary heat, and an evening that closed a stifling day 
in which all space seemed weighted with a smothering 
heaviness. The atmosphere lay in strata, tangible, as if 
packed about one’s body. One was conscious of the 
effort expended in every gesture. Walls, ceilings, roofs, 
became intolerable. 

After the sun had gone down, Angela went out into 
the thickness of the night and sat upon a patch of grass 
upon the incline above her father’s vineyard. Beyond 
the misty masses of the lifted vines, beyond the dipping 
rows of vegetables in the gardens, spread the vastness of 
the sky, heavily suspended. There was no wind, there 
seemed scarcely to be air; waves fell on the shore like re¬ 
flex motions of exhausted nature. Not a leaf stirred. 
Insects chirred hotly, incessantly. In a distant sector of 
the heavens the repeated sharp brightness of heat light¬ 
ning flashed and faded, like unintelligible signallings in 
a mysterious electric code. 

Angela sat and watched the lightning play in the dis¬ 
tant sky, too exhausted to think of her troubles; yet 
there was a feeling of dim unrest in her lassitude. Her 
energies were depleted; but some portion of her mind was 
nervously awake to a hovering menace in the night. 

Suddenly her consciousness was caught by the mo- 
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# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
mentary apparition of a figure in the sky. It was briefly 
discerned—for just the space of a lightning flash—a fig¬ 
ure sensed rather than seen—an immense face and one 
long arm upraised—the momentary appearance of an in¬ 
complete gesture. 

Angela was startled by its bizarre resemblance to a 
human form. It had suggested something, she did not 
know what; her interest was aroused to see it more 
clearly. For a long time the flashes of lightning were 
scattered far and wide, but at last she caught again the 
black outline of a head, a sharp face in profile, and one 
uplifted, pointing arm. It was gone in an instant, and 
she realized that it was nothing more than a silhouette of 
trees standing far away against the brightness of a light¬ 
ning flash. 

It was nothing, of course—too brief, too indistinct to 
be anything whatever; but it had been caught by some 
mysterious blank plane of her being, as by a photographic 
plate, its very vagueness gave it significance, and under 
her lassitude she was faintly stirred to a dim attentive 
wonder. 

The process of that dim wonder’s evolution into an 
idea, into a thought leading ultimately to action, was 
too subtle, too delicate for words. It can only be indi¬ 
cated that for a time her mind (recently so filled with 
worries, regrets and sorrows, so isolated from contact with 
the affairs of the world about her, and so occupied 
with her own unhappiness) wandered vaguely among un¬ 
real and mysterious things, unnatural things—the old 
remembered figures of elf and fairy worlds, returned frag¬ 
ments and personalities out of forgotten tales—giants, 
sprites, hobgoblins, ghosts. Out of her imagination An- 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
gela peopled the sky and the heavy darkness^ till 
she could feel, at last, the passing of weird presences 
about her, could sense the movement of incorporeal per¬ 
sonalities through the silence of the night. 

These floating vague presences developed too smoothly 
out of the unconscious following of a casually awakened 
interest to startle or shock her. There was, just then, a 
recurrent flash of lightning, psychologically timed, the 
briefest reappearance of that profile against the sky, and 
that uncompleted gesture of an uplifted arm. The ges¬ 
ture led Angela’s thought afar, toward heaven, beyond 
the sky—to the resurrected Christ, the Virgin enthroned, 
ranked angels, beatified saints, translated souls, the en¬ 
tire hierarchy of heaven. Among those souls she saw (a 
vision of her imagination) the soul of her mother, radiant, 
transfigured, yet somehow frail as the woman’s body had 
been frail in life, watching with solicitous tenderness over 
her unhappy daughter—watching with tenderness, but 
unable to comfort her in her sorrow. 

Angela sat as one hypnotized. Not once in all the un¬ 
happiness that had attended the fulfilling of her vow had 
she actually forsaken her trust in her mother. She had 
been constant in her allegiance and her love. Her moth¬ 
er’s death had been a shaking catastrophe for which she 
was responsible; her atonement had been fundamentally 
necessary for the girl’s peace; her vow had been neces¬ 
sary and right. All her resulting pain had been part of 
a just and inglorious martyrdom. 

But it occurred to her finally that this sorrow could 
not be the thing that her mother had desired for her, could 
not be the thing that she had died to make her daughter 
accept. No. If her mother had lived, all this misery 
245 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
would somehow have been averted. Things had not 
gone in accordance with her mother’s intention. She 
felt now that if her mother could be reached and appealed 
to she would, from the depths of an all-seeing knowledge, 
a new wisdom, direct her child in a path of recovered 
peace. 

The girl had, finally, an unmistakable impression that 
her mother’s spirit was waiting for her somewhere out 
there between heaven and earth, having come as far as 
possible in an attempt to succour her daughter. If she, 
the daughter, could reach out into those still spaces be¬ 
yond the world to meet that waiting spirit, she would 
find peace. She looked up at the stars. The night 
spread away like a great dark land. Somewhere out there 
her comforter waited. How could she approach that 
tender, yearning spirit? How could she advance through 
those starlit spaces? Must she die? She could pray— 
but she had already prayed! She could . . . 

There flashed into her mind a thought which she im¬ 
mediately put away; but it came again, and each time 
she dismissed it, it returned. It was a sinful thought, 
filled with unholiness and terror. All the antennae of 
her superstitions became sensitive, stirred in revulsion. 
But in spite of its terror the idea took root in her mind 
as a dim possibility, attracted her with an unholy fascina¬ 
tion, grew more definite and promising, became at last 
the clear though dangerous way of her release. 

She determined to go and see Mrs. Session. 

The Sessions were one of the old families of Melton. 
They could trace their New England antecedents back 
through more than a century and a half, and that entire 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
record, in spite of the additions of new blood, was a 
record of mistakes and failures in the financial field. Re¬ 
peatedly they had gone into things when they ought to 
have stayed out; they had stayed out when they ought to 
have gone in. Only old Howard Session and his wife still 
remained on the dreary farm, which he worked with 
Portuguese help, and where she took summer boarders. 
Mr. Session was a tall, dark, piratical-looking man. His 
wife was very large, vigorous in spite of her sixty years, 
but slow and unwieldy, and colourless from a chronic 
"indigestion/' 

Mrs. Session had the distinction of being clairvoyant. 
She was a psychic creature absolutely untutored in the 
formulas and aims of Spiritism. She was an item of 
strongest evidence tending to prove the reality of what 
is known as spirit-communication, for the outstanding 
features of her personality were a large simplicity and a 
puritanism far too strict to stoop to pretence. She knew 
nothing of professional Spiritism; she was unaware of the 
practice of spirit-photography; she had never seen a 
materialization, had never heard of ectoplasm; and if 
she had known of these phenomena, they would have 
meant nothing to her, since they had nothing to do with 
her. 

The woman had an Indian control, locally known as 
the Indian Doctor; and her psychical work consisted 
principally in the transmission of the Doctor’s medical 
advice. His simple prescriptions of herbs were credited 
with numerous cures in cases where regular practitioners 
of medicine had failed. He frequently foretold coming 
events. From time to time, though rarely, he also de¬ 
livered through the mouth of Mrs. Session statements 
247 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
which were clearly spirit-communications, messages from 
people known to be dead, messages of rational import, 
the truth of which had been verified in the material world. 

The community of Melton gave its faith and credence 
to the Indian Doctor, and Mrs. Session was regarded with 
a half-familiar reverence as the priestess of a mysterious 
cult 

After a mental struggle Angela finally reached a de¬ 
cision to go to see Mrs. Session. Such trafficking was 
contrary to the teaching of her church; she would be 
censured by Father Pasquale, scorned by her neighbours, 
and ridiculed by her husband, if they should find out 
that she had done such a thing. All her superstitions 
struggled to restrain her. But in spite of the dangers, 
urged by something outside herself, she decided to take 
whatever risk there might be and, as secretly as possible, 
attempt to reach her mother by this hazardous way. 


248 


^ XXVII 


On the morning following her vision Angela rose to 
another day of terrible heat. Giorgio had not come 
home in the night; her household duties were therefore 
of the simplest; but the heat made even the most casual 
duties onerous. She could not go to Melton on a day 
like this. She would have to walk when she went, for 
secrecy; it was almost six miles in to the Session house. 
No, she could not go to-day. Yet she was afraid that 
she might lose all she hoped for if she did not go at once. 
But she could not go. It might be cooler later, but there 
seemed to be no prospect of that. This heat was terrible. 
Everything was stifled—dying. 

Once during the morning, passing down the hall, she 
thought she felt a faint breeze blow in from the sea, but 
it died immediately. She felt it again, half an hour 
later, and she suddenly took hope that the weather was 
about to cool. She looked out of the kitchen window, 
across the baked earth of the yard, and beheld great tow¬ 
ers of soft white cloud blown up above the sea, a sign, 
she was sure, that there was wind out there. 

Filled with nervous hope, she went and dressed lightly 
in a new pink dress and a pale blue hat that had been 
items of her trousseau and, leaving plenty of cold food 
for her father’s dinner, she went out of the house. 

As she stepped into the glare, she paused a moment, 

249 


jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE Jt 
feeling the shock of her plunge into that torrid atmos¬ 
phere as one feels the shock of a plunge into the sea. 
Through the heat waves she looked up toward the Fist 
In those fields, beautifully ascending to an apex, women 
were at work, under big straw hats that bobbed and 
swayed as they moved. Beyond the Fist a great white 
column of cloud rose, majestic and sunlit. Angela gazed 
at that immense picture, somewhat dazzled; then she 
turned and went along the road toward Melton. 

It was insufferably hot in the marshes. She seemed 
there to have descended into a nether Hades of deeper 
discomfort. She hurried to escape, growing more hot 
and irritated as she went. Then, just as she rose out 
of that destroying hot smother, she beheld Joe driving 
slowly toward her in the big double cart. She was 
startled and terrified at his approach. Their last meet¬ 
ing had been on that night when she had run to save him 
from self-destruction and he had misunderstood her mo¬ 
tive. She did not now know how to greet him; she was 
fearful of the manner in which he might greet her. She 
would have hidden from him if she could, but there was 
no place. She must face him. Yes, she must face him, 
but she must never let him guess the pain he had caused 
her. 

Joe came on, and as she beheld clearly again, in a 
glance, his handsomeness, sensed his manhood, and re¬ 
membered his love, her pain grew sharp. The renewed 
realization that she might have had him for her own, 
but had let him go, hurt her inexpressibly. She had 
loved him before with the freshness of love and a half- 
mysterious reluctance to surrender to him; but now she 
loved him with a great depth of love and a passionate 
250 


£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
understanding of all that he might have meant to her. 

Feeling these things and realizing that she was the 
wife of another man, she could not look at Joe as he 
approached; her face, she felt, was crying out her piti¬ 
ful story. He was very close now. She could feel his 
eyes upon her. She could not meet his glance! Not 
yet. . . . But she was abreast of the horses. She must 
look up! She could not let him pass without . . . 

She raised her eyes to his brown face bent above 
her, and as she did so, she saw a veil of shadow drawn 
away before his eyes till the old bright light showed 
through their visible sorrow. He had been afraid that 
she was going to pass without a greeting. 

In that first instant she took into herself a picture of 
him which was to remain with her always—the tan of 
his face and his bare throat under the shaded light of his 
wide straw hat, the set of his broad shoulders, the balance 
of his legs as he swayed to the movement of the cart, and 
the muscles swelling on his arm as he reined in the 
horses. 

She stopped and tried to smile gaily, but her face 
was betraying her, she knew, as his face was betraying 
him. He took off his hat, revealing the shine of his eyes, 
the pale skin of his forehead, and the sheen of his dark 
hair, and that gesture of gallantry stabbed her with 
memories that were pitiful and poignant. 

“Hello, Angel,” he said. 

At the words and the sound of his voice, she almost 
burst into tears. To hear him say that name filled her 
with gratitude—he might so easily have said her other 
name. Her spirit rose on that surge of gratitude, rose 
out of a great depth, and in an agony of desire to recipro- 
251 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
cate his kindness, she said frankly, “Hello, Joe.” She 
was able to raise her eyes as she said it, and they stood 
gazing into each other’s souls. 

For a moment they felt each other distinctly, held 
each other, as it were, in the glory of an abandoned 
spiritual embrace, knowing each other’s love, knowing 
the precious beauty of each other, knowing each other’s 
pain. For a moment, without intention or effort, they 
leaped all barriers and stood alone together above all the 
disasters of their lives, yielding, accepting, sealing an 
irrevocable pact of devotion. 

Then gradually from that high surge and contact they 
sank apart, sank down on the surface of memory to a 
commoner level and the interchange of words. 

“Are you happy, Angel?” he asked her. 

“Happy? Why—yes,” she said. 

He knew that she was not. 

She had lied bravely, but the agony of it was all 
she could bear. With that lie, she saw herself sending 
him away again, abandoning him a second time—aban¬ 
doning herself. 

He talked then of other things, but what they said 
back and forth doesn’t matter, never mattered. Only 
that surge of emotion, that momentary contact, matters 
or ever mattered. All other memories were to go down 
before the significance of that spiritual embrace. For 
Angela, all sorrows were to be forgotten and all pain 
was to be found endurable, while the memory of that 
moment remained. 

They parted soon and went along their separate ways; 
but when she had gone some distance Angela turned to 
catch a glimpse of him again, and there he was, just 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
rising out of the marshes at the far side, clear to her view 
against the green incline of the cliff. She paused to take 
the distant picture of him into the inmost shrine of her 
heart, the shrine miraculously prepared for his reinstate¬ 
ment. He did not pause or turn or look back, and she 
watched him retreat into the distance as into a kind of 
unreality. Standing there alone, she made a gesture— 
waved her damp handkerchief aloft—as if to delay him, 
as if to call him back; but it was as if she were signalling 
to someone far away in time—some memory, some figure 
momentarily recovered out of the past, now returning into 
the past again, perhaps for ever. 

She turned at last, with a dull feeling at her heart, 
and went along the hot road to the Session house. 

During the remainder of her long journey reality 
crowded about Angela—heat and discomfort and an in¬ 
creasing bodily weariness. It was an open road, here 
rough with sharp stones that rolled angularly, there 
heavy with deep clogging dust. Along the fences and 
low banks on either side, clumps of half-dead bushes 
stood and listlessly watched her go. She was already 
tired as she passed the little square schoolhouse standing 
wearily in its yard of arid gravel. A small faded flag 
hung limp at the peak of the pole. Within the open 
window spaces she could see the tops of small heads, 
light and dark, and once she heard a chorus of clear 
voices answering the question of an invisible teacher. 

At the end of another mile she came into the shade 
of a high privet hedge. Here she sat down on a com¬ 
paratively cool strip of grass, removed her hat, pushed 
the hair back from her perspiring forehead, and rested. 
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S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
She could have fallen asleep without difficulty. In the 
barnyard beyond the fence, hens were clucking content¬ 
edly, and Angela went off into a dream in the hot still¬ 
ness—a dream of Joe. She was startled into wakefulness 
after a few minutes by the excited cackling of a hen 
that, in spite of the weather, had just laid an egg. 

Angela rose abruptly and went on. Just beyond the 
privet hedge the view widened out again across green 
fields, and then the road dipped into a little valley. As 
she went she could see on the farther rise, beyond inter¬ 
vening trees, the windmill; and her strength came back 
with a rush, for she saw the miller, like a sailor, setting 
canvas to the frames of his sails. She went on with re¬ 
covered energy. In the bottom of the little valley a 
clear stream went chugging under the roadway, even in 
this drought. Along its banks on the right, and clustered 
along the road, the soft green contours of willows stood. 
Beyond the succeeding rise of land she again descended 
into a little valley, and then the long incline of Price’s 
Hill rose before her. Angela stood and contemplated 
that long rise of quivering road. It seemed more than 
she could accomplish; she was tired out. Her garments 
were sticking to her body; her feet felt as if they were 
blistered from the heat of the road; she was thirsty al¬ 
most to the point of gasping, yet she did not ask for 
a drink at any of the houses along the way, for the occu¬ 
pants would surely want to know where she was going— 
where she was walking, on a day like this. She told her¬ 
self that she must go on, and as she began to move wearily, 
automatically forward again in response to that command 
of her thought, there came down upon her warm damp 
body an unmistakable cool temperature. It was not a 
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# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
wind—not at first—but a coolness driven into the dead 
atmosphere by a strong following wind. Amazed, she 
looked about her and beheld a darkness over in the 
north-west sky. She began the long climb of the hill. 

It was half an hour before she reached the top of that 
slow tedious rise that continually flattened out before 
her. At the top at last, she paused to quiet her heaving 
breast. Turning, she looked back over the splendid 
panorama. Straight away before her the fields of the 
island rolled, like the waves of a green sea, with the 
gleaming road, like a silken tape, lying along their sur¬ 
face. To the east lay the sparkling blue waste of the 
ocean. To the west lay the bay—a smooth dark field— 
dotted with small yachts and pleasure boats like gay 
bright blossoms. Beyond that lay the mainland with its 
town and the town's hovering pall of smoke; and over 
the town, over that quarter of the sea, over the bay and 
the bulk of the Fist, hung the black and threatening 
darkness of a storm. Angela could see the shadow of it 
creeping toward her across the land and the water. It 
crept, but it came swiftly. Before she had recovered her 
breath, the windmill below her began to race, wildly, 
like a demon gone mad; the next moment the wind struck 
her, went flying past her, all about her, whipping angrily 
at her clothes, penetrating and chilling her body. 

For a moment she contemplated the transformed world 
where trees now bent and thrashed in a gathering dark¬ 
ness and the sea seemed to rise out of a long calm into a 
sudden black rage. As Angela looked, a great fork 
of lightning opened the sky toward the north, giving her 
a momentary glimpse of the blinding glory of that 
heaven lying beyond the sky; the crashing of thunders 
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jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
echoed across the wind-swept earth; veils of rain crept 
out across the waters of the bay and sea—slowly sway¬ 
ing grey veils that moved, gathered, advanced, blotted 
out sections of the distant town, the small boats at 
anchor, the immense spread of waters, the crown of the 
Fist. . . . 

Angela turned and ran at last. There was an element 
of anger in the ruthless flying forces about her—there 
was something savage. All around, filling space, was the 
sound of a mad rushing; lightnings flamed continually, 
as from wild eyes; thunders growled incessantly in an 
enormous throat. Angela knew the power that was thus 
pursuing her—the cruel God, grown angry at her attempt 
to escape His cruelty—and she was filled with super¬ 
stitious dread. She began to tremble as she ran. 

It was characteristic of the girl that in this outburst of 
nature she should see the direct intervention of Heaven 
in her personal affairs, especially the direct intervention 
of an angry Heaven to prevent her from proceeding in 
this business that she had always been taught was un¬ 
lawful and wrong. Already tired out, she spent upon 
these fears the remnant of her stamina and endurance. 
Stumbling in her terror, she almost went down, but she 
saved herself and hurried forward, whimpering. Soon 
she was under the great elms of Melton. A persistent 
wild wind worried at the trees; leaves and twigs rattled 
down upon her in clouds. Then, when she was in sight 
of the Session house, the rain came beating with an over¬ 
whelming sound of hoofs. The great drops stung her 
flesh as they struck—stung like countless small arrows 
from the bows of a relentless enemy. In a moment she 
was wet to the skin. As she hurried forward, puddles 
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# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
formed under her feet; the road ran with swift rills of 
water. She expected each moment to be punished for 
her sin—to be struck down, to be overwhelmed; but she 
kept on. 

Shaken with terror and drenched, she at last reached 
the Session piazza, stumbled up the steps, and rang the 
bell. While she waited, pressed flat against the wall of 
the house, the rain beat into her retreat in sheets, so that 
her legs and feet were immersed in a running stream. 
Her hat hung like a limp rag in her hand; her hair was 
plastered upon her neck and shoulders, and hung in 
streaming strands about her face. 

The door was opened a crack and held against the beat 
of the storm. Angela squeezed in and pressed the door 
close behind her, stood dripping and trembling in the 
dark hall, looking dazedly up into the luminous patch of 
Mrs. Session’s face. For a moment neither of the women 
spoke, but stood listening together to the roaring sweep 
of the trees outside, to the countless sharp hoof-beats of 
the rain, to the thunder, to the rumbling of an extraor¬ 
dinary tumult that could not be described or accounted 
for in nature. 

They both started convulsively as an intense flame of 
lightning seemed in reality to play upon the walls about 
them; then Mrs. Session shouted through the deafening 
crash of thunder that immediately followed, "You’re 
drenched wet. You’d best come into the kitchen.” 

The great unwieldy bulk of the woman went swaying 
slowly along the hallway, and Angela, supporting her 
shaken body with a hand upon the wall, followed her as 
one who walks asleep. 


257 


^ XXVIII 


An hour later Angela and Mrs. Session sat opposite 
each other across a square green-covered card table in 
the big parlour of the Session house. It was past one 
o’clock. 

In the meantime Mrs. Session, out of the goodness of 
her heart, had given Angela her dinner and had helped 
her to dry her clothes. There was always a fire in the 
Session kitchen at midday; the Sessions always had a 
hot dinner at noon. Out of doors the storm had con¬ 
tinued to rage and pound for a long time, seeming to 
absorb a great portion of Angela’s dull attention, but 
it had gradually passed over; with its passing, the girl 
had revived and responded to Mrs. Session’s kindness. 

During all this time it had not once occurred to the 
older woman that her visitor had come on any business 
whatever. She saw in her only a draggled young thing 
who had come terrified to her door to escape from the 
storm. It was only in these last ten minutes that Angela 
had made her understand the purpose of her visit. On 
thus understanding, Mrs. Session had at once turned 
from her work, led the way along the corridor into the 
parlour, motioned Angela into a seat by the green-topped 
table, and had herself taken the opposite chair, in the 
alcove of a bay window. 

The Session parlour was a long, narrow, high corn- 

258 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
partment with straight walls, except where the tomb¬ 
like regularity of its dimensions was broken by this 
bay jutting out at the side, near the rear of the room. 
The curtains of this alcove were drawn, closing out the 
light, as were the curtains of the other windows. A dead 
air filled the gloom; the floor and the furniture were 
covered with dust. 

It was an outlandish room, a melange , hideous; but 
to Angela the old-fashioned, worn-out pieces of furniture 
were emblems of a rich culture. The collection of stiff 
prints and engravings that deepened the sombreness of 
the walls deepened for the girl the sense of mysterious 
elegance existing here. The old black square piano, the 
bookcases blinded by green curtains behind their glass 
doors, the stuffed owls, the faded lambrequins and 
"drapes,” all spoke to Angela of ambitions and ideals 
beyond her conception. It increased for her the mysteri¬ 
ousness of her errand to enter into that atmosphere 
of decayed refinement, and it contributed to her awe 
to be in the presence of those seemingly-splendid 
furnishings. 

From a slow survey of the apartment her eyes turned 
to contemplate its mistress. Mrs. Session’s face was 
turned toward her with concentrated attention. Already, 
to Angela’s mind, she was a different person from the 
woman who had been so kind to her in the kitchen awhile 
ago. Her immensity seemed to have taken on new dig¬ 
nity and importance. The woman at once, with her first 
words, again expanded in all sensed dimensions, for she 
spoke casually of things beyond life—awe-inspiring and 
unlawful things. 

"I don’t know whether I can get you anything from 

259 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
the spirits or not/' she was saying. “You’ll have to ask 
what you want to know when the Doctor comes. Don’t 
be afraid to ask him; he’ll help you if he can.” 

Angela had no clear notion of what was going to hap¬ 
pen. She felt inadequate to the performance of her 
part in this mysterious rite, but she must go on with it 
now. She folded her hands before her on the table in 
an unconscious attitude of semi-worship, and looked at 
Mrs. Session, waiting. The room was very quiet; the 
house was very quiet. Outside, faint breezes wandered 
through the trees, shaking down light showers of rain¬ 
drops, and from some point of roof or spout a slow, 
regular drip of water fell upon the tin roof over her 
head, like the tick of a clock measuring eternity. 

Mrs. Session leaned back in her chair, which creaked 
under her weight as she moved, and closed her eyes. 
She sat so for two or three minutes, while Angela lis¬ 
tened to that drip—drip—drip on the roof. She felt un¬ 
comfortable, as though she had been left to proceed alone 
in a strange adventure. Then Mrs. Session’s chair 
creaked again, her hands clutched tightly on the chair- 
arms, her body seemed to stiffen all over with a long 
effort, her head was raised into an attitude of haughty 
pride, and her mouth twitched two or three times to the 
left side. 

Before Angela’s gaze the woman’s individuality faded 
away. She might have been epileptically convulsed, she 
might have been dying; she was not normal, not her¬ 
self. She had gone away. As the girl gazed at her, 
sounds issued from the woman’s lips—guttural articula¬ 
tions that had no meaning—in a voice that was not Mrs. 

260 


J* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

Session’s voice, could not be Mrs. Session’s voice—a 
man’s voice. 

“ B aw—we—no—go—dah.” 

Slowly the senseless sounds came forth from the empti¬ 
ness of Mrs. Session’s body. They were followed by a 
silence so intense that the dripping of water on the roof 
seemed to have taken on a sort of vehemence. Then, 
clearly, Angela heard: 

“Doctor. You want Doctor? You call? Doctor is 
here. Speak. Indian Doctor listen.” 

The phrases came clearly but slowly, with long pauses 
between them. Angela’s mind was a chaos; she was both 
repelled by something unnatural in this phenomenon 
and impelled by curiosity; she wanted to cry out, yet 
she could not for awe; she wished that she had not come, 
tried at the same time to understand the strange trans¬ 
formation of Mrs. Session, was dumfounded with wonder 
while still endeavouring to formulate a request. 

“Speak,” the voice said again. “I listen.” 

Mrs. Session’s lips scarcely moved to say those clear 
deep words. 

“I want t’ get word from my mother,” Angela man¬ 
aged to say through her agitation. Her lips were stiff; 
she had to wet them with her tongue before they would 
move. “My mother,” she repeated. “She’s dead. I 
want my mother t’ help me . . 

“Mother,” the voice repeated, interrupting her, as if 
impatient. “White girl is in trouble. Name is—name— 
name is Angella. Angella wants help from mother. 
Wait.” 

The voice pronounced her name by accenting the sec- 

261 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
ond syllable. She thought of this during the brief si¬ 
lence that followed, while she listened to the drip—drip 
—drip—drip of the rain on the roof. Then the voice 
came forth again, as from a distance, muttering. 

"Sat—no—gah—wan-mass—cut—way.” There 

soon followed something understandable. "Doctor no 
can find. Little mother no come. No message for white 
daughter. Indian Doctor sorry. Little mother no come 
to Angella. Sorry. Yes. No. No message. Wait.” 

There followed another brief pause in which Angela 
began to feel disappointed. She hoped that the Indian 
Doctor had gone to make another search. She felt like 
a lost child, forsaken and shaken in some deep confidence. 
Not until she was told that there was to be no message 
did she realize how definitely she had hoped for and ex¬ 
pected one. 

"Yes!” the voice boomed out suddenly without pre¬ 
liminaries, startling Angela so that she almost leaped to 
her feet. It was the unmistakable voice of a warrior. 
"Yes! Doctor can see—can see—by side of white girl— 
white boy—white man—at side of Angella. Tall— 
straight—brave—good boy. Doctor like young brave. 
He smile. Black hair like wing of crow. Brown eyes— 
shine like stars—in deep night water. Doctor can see 
good boy—right side blue like heron's wing—left side 
gold—gold—like fire—shine. Young brave smile—smile 
to Angella—white girl. Wait.” 

In that next brief pause Angela felt her disappointment 
more keenly. All this meant nothing to her. She had 
the impression that there stood beside her a young Indian 
brave, in whom she was not interested except to the ex¬ 
tent of a slight distrustful fear. It was her mother she 
262 


J AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
wanted to hear from. Yet there moved in her an unmis¬ 
takable curiosity about that other figure. She turned 
her head as she waited, but there was no evidence for 
her senses of any presence in her vicinity. Then again 
the voice boomed out from Mrs. Session’s lips. 

"Wait! Young man—he say—he speak to white girl 
—speak to Angel.” 

At the sound of that name she cried out, shocked into 
a kind of terror; this impossible performance at which 
she was present was coming closer to her. There was 
only one young man who had ever called her Angel. She 
wanted to run away; but the voice interrupted her, ar¬ 
rested her; it had fallen into a dreamy kind of mono¬ 
tone, as if tired, and Angela followed the sounds in an 
intensity of interest. 

"Young man say—say . . The voice trailed away. 
Angela, tense with eagerness, feared that she was not to 
hear any more. But the voice resumed immediately. 
"Young man say—he say—I love Angel—always—al¬ 
ways love Angel. Angel—be happy—always. I—wait. 
Angel—be—happy. I wait. I love—Angel—always. 
Be—happy. Be—happy.” 

This was too intimate, too stirring. The repetition of 
that name Angel was like the repeated thrusting of a 
weapon into her deepest wound. Be happy! Who was 
it, in God’s name, that wished her happiness? Who 
mocked her so? 

"Who is he?” she cried. "Tell me—who is he?” 

"Who—who—who . . .” the voice echoed, like the 
call of an owl. "Who? Young brave love white girl 

—always. Who is? Name—name is—is-name is 

John—Joh—name is—Joe. Wait. Tha’s right—yes— 

263 



£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ji 
name is—Joe. Loves Angel. Arms aroun’ Angel. Joe 

—he smile. Good white boy—yes—be—happy-sar 

—bo gish—nay dah. Yes. Man—it—ton—no- 

no-o-o . . ” 

The voice trailed off into a long silence. 

Angela sat trembling, with wet eyes, before a great 
mystery, conscious of a confused and awe-filled wonder 
within her, aware of a pressing fear and pain. 

Into the silence of her isolation came the creak of Mrs. 
Session’s chair and the sound of the drip on the roof. 
Angela roused and looked at the woman, whose head 
drooped slowly forward on to her great bosom. In a mo¬ 
ment the woman slumped slightly forward and clasped 
her hands tensely in her lap; her eyes opened, and in 
her own returned voice she asked, “Did you get what you 
wanted?” 

Angela shook her head. 

“Oh!” Mrs. Session was disappointed. “You can 
never be sure,” she said, as she adjusted her figure in the 
creaking chair. “I’m sorry. Didn’t you get anything?” 

“I didn’t get anything from my mother. Only some¬ 
thin’ about a young man named Joe.” 

'D’you know any young man named Joe?” 

“Yes. But he ain’t dead. I saw him jus’ this mornin’. 
Could the Doctor get a message from someone livin’?” 

Mrs. Session looked at the girl for a moment with 
fixed attention. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry 
you didn’t get a communication from your mother.” 

Angela nodded, and they sat quietly opposite each 
other for several minutes; then Angela rose and thanked 
Mrs. Session, gave her some money, bade her good-bye, 
and departed. 


264 


£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 

Out of doors everything was washed clean. Little 
rivulets ran beside the road, the ground was strewn with 
leaves and twigs. The air was crystal-clear; from time 
to time faint breezes stirred the trees, shaking down clus¬ 
tered brittle drops like showers of glass. Angela went 
swiftly, feeling light, feeling free, as if she had been re¬ 
leased from an imprisonment. 

The experience she had just come through was too 
extraordinary for her to understand; to be grasped, it 
would have to be thought over, weighed. She would 
have to turn its unreality into something comprehensible 
before she could grasp it; yet it was already becoming 
vague as a dream. What was clear was this: she had 
not obtained what she had gone for. Yet the depth of 
disappointment which it seemed she ought to feel was 
absent. The message she had received—purporting to 
come from Joe—was no compensation for the other fail¬ 
ure, for it amounted to no more than she had had from 
his lips and eyes that morning. It had been unnecessary; 
she knew Joe’s love. Yet the message (if it meant any¬ 
thing at all) certainly completed for her the erection of 
a holy place in her heart, a shrine to Joe, illicit and un¬ 
lawful, but precious. In contemplating that shrine, she 
actually forgot, from time to time, the disappointment 
of her failure to get a message from her mother; yet the 
two things were distinct and separate, having no relation 
to each other. 

Her mind wandered over the situation incessantly, 
without understanding. 


265 


J» XXIX ^ 


It was a long way from the Session place to the Fist, 
and constantly, as Angela proceeded, there struggled 
within her, for control of her life, a sense of hopeless 
failure, clearly accounted for, and an unaccountable 
lightness—a mysterious tendency toward happiness. As 
she advanced on her way, however, she became more an4 
more weary, and despair rose and ruled her. She was 
returning to the condition she had attempted to escape 
from; nothing had changed. Joe’s assurance of love, 
which might have been for her solace, only increased her 
misery, because of its hopelessness, its impossibility. She 
was returning to a condition of misery, full of shame and 
pain. 

She had still an intense, though vague, desire to run 
away; she sensed this return to be somehow unforgivable 
on her own part, a thing not to have been expected of her. 
She was amazed at her own return, wondered why she 
should be coming back; but there was no place for her to 
escape to. Her only possible escape lay in divorce, but 
the church would not sanction divorce, except on con¬ 
ditions which Angela shrank from facing. If Giorgio 
would release her she supposed that something might be 
arranged. She wondered if Giorgio would release her. 
She didn’t see why he shouldn’t; he couldn’t love her and 
do what he had done; and if he didn’t love her . . . 

266 


j» AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

Her ideas were of the vaguest and she was very tired. 
As she rose out of the marshes, she trembled with physical 
revulsion at again entering into her place in the com¬ 
munity that lay before her. Her husband’s new house 
seemed to glow in the light of the sun that moved calmly 
westward toward the distant town, and in front of the 
house she saw the three Gossips standing, talking to¬ 
gether in the road. Their figures indicated the three 
sides of an irregular triangle, and the broad back of the 
Stout Gossip was turned toward the girl. 

The Thin Woman was talking, but as Angela came 
into view, draggled and dejected, the woman paused in 
the midst of a sentence and stared at that approaching 
figure. The Washed-out Widow and the Stout One 
turned then, and in a silence charged with importance 
they watched the girl come on. 

Angela was exhausted, too weary to mind their stares, 
and she would have passed them without pausing, but 
as she came on, the Tall One spoke: 

‘'Did you get caught in the storm?” 

Angela nodded and would have gone on, but the Spin¬ 
ster could not allow that, could not permit this oppor¬ 
tunity to pass. She moved a step or two and stood in 
the girl’s way. 

“If you been away I guess you ain’t heard the news,” 
she said. 

Angela paused and looked at her listlessly, without 
answering. 

“If you been away I guess you don’t know he’s dead.” 

Thus the Gossips went boldly up to a climax of life, 
and they now hung suspended, as it were, in a state of 
intensest interest, awaiting the crash of events. Angela 
267 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
seemed to emerge from a remote state of being and again 
come in contact with the horrors of existence. 

Dead! Dead! Dead! Something within her seemed 
to repeat the word interminably, till suddenly with a 
shock, she grasped its significance. At that, extraordi¬ 
nary fears moved in her mind. Who was he? Who was 
dead? Tremendous consequences seemed to hang upon 
the answer to that question—consequences having little 
to do with her, affecting things immensely more impor¬ 
tant than she. Who was he? 

In her mind there rose the thought, reflecting a sub¬ 
conscious hope, that he might be her husband; yet she 
feared to hear the fact of Giorgio’s death stated. So ar¬ 
dent was her new-born desire for that consummation, she 
shrank from it with the terror of a murderer. But the 
death of the only other man who he could be was un¬ 
thinkable. At the mere suggestion of that in her mind 
everything went black about her, but she struggled 
against that engulfing darkness, and escaped from it. Af¬ 
ter an eternity of agony she murmured stupidly, “Dead?” 

As if she had been waiting for that word as a cue, the 
sentimental little Widow burst into a flood of tears 
and words. “Dead!” she sobbed. “The poor lad! 
Dead—the strong young fellah, with all his life before 
him. Dead there in the field, with the rain poundin’ on 
his face an’ mud in his thick black hair. Struck down 
in a minute out o’ the hand o’ God.” She crossed her¬ 
self and paused a moment; then she began again in a 
kind of monotone. “I saw him with my own eyes, 
lyin’ under the murderin’ sky—the clo’s clung tight t’ his 
strong body as if he’d been drowned in the sea, the rain 
beat him from head t’ foot an’ splashed on his bare chest. 

268 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 

His face had gone dark with the red blood that was 
turned thick an’ stopped so sudden, an’ round his neck 
a band was burned like the mark of a hot iron. Ah, 
yes, he’s dead, the poor fellah. Out there in the field 
’twas me that shut his eyes against the rain.” 

The woman paused in her talk, but her tears con¬ 
tinued to flow. Angela stood and looked at her, and all 
her life was concentrated in that look. It was Joe that 
was dead, she told herself, and then she told herself that 
she had known it was Joe when the Tall Woman had 
first said the words, “He’s dead.” But she did not cry 
out now—she did not make any sound. She had sud¬ 
denly grown too dull in spirit for expression—as if the 
supporting strength of her being had been withdrawn, 
leaving her empty, a rag, a heap, like an empty grain- 
sack thrown upon the earth. She was numb—somehow 
shattered—too broken for pain. 

“What had he done t’ be struck down like that by 
the hand o’ God?” the little woman demanded. 

Angela wearily roused to the question, and strangely 
there formed in her mind an answer which she did not 
utter. “It’s me He was striking at,” she thought. 

Through her weariness there glimmered the last rem¬ 
nant of her bitterness; she abandoned hope; she knew 
that God was her enemy. All the evidence of her life 
tended to prove it. Everything that she had done she 
had done with the best of intentions, following the path 
of duty as it had been shown her; but at every turn God 
had placed a deeper pool of sorrow for her feet. What 
did it mean? She had heard of the wages of sin, but 
were these the wages of virtue? She had lost her mother, 
she had lost her husband, she had lost her lover. Why? 
269 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

The God to whom she had cried out again and again had 
not saved her; He had misled her, mocked her in the 
storm, roLoed her of everything, cut away Joe, her last 
hope on earth, prevented her from reaching her mother, 
her only hope in heaven. 

“Don’t be afraid t’ cry,” the Fat Gossip said to her. 
“Don’t be afraid of us; we saw you that day out on the 
Fist with him, an’ we know how you feel.” She said it 
comfortingly, strangely moved from her aloof attitude 
of spectator by her memory and her imagination. 

Angela looked at her dully. She did not feel like 
crying. But out of the depths of her being, without her 
volition, words came, like the testimony of her spirit 
unashamed. 

“Joe was a good fellah,” she said. “Too good for me. 
I married someone else, an’ still he loved me. I didn’t 
deserve him, but oh, I wanted him—an’ now he’s dead.” 

She turned then in desolation, feeling the bitter mean¬ 
ing of her words, and went on toward her father’s house, 
leaving the three women standing and silently watching 
her go. 

In the kitchen she went over and sat down by the 
table and began to pleat the red-and-white-checked table¬ 
cloth in her fingers. Everything was finished; this was 
the end. She had come back to this house to move for 
ever among shadows—shadows cast by the most im¬ 
portant realities of her life, projecting backward into 
the past and forward into the future. 

She sat there a long time thinking, yet without con- 
cious thought, feeling, yet without sensation, till sud¬ 
denly there sounded in her brain, startlingly and with 
270 


^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

a kind of shocking, mocking terror, the words HAPPY— 
HAPPY—BE HAPPY! . . . 

They sounded through Angela’s brain like a refrain— 
a kind of chorus—the echoes of a deep voice heard 
booming that day in a darkened room. That refrain 
rose and rose and swept through her—not through her 
mind alone now, but through the deepest hidden places 
of her consciousness as well—rose and swept back and 
forth, like the beat of great wings, filling her with the 
cadence of a new hope. She was moved by the sway of 
that sweeping rhythm. She believed those words to be 
Joe’s last cry—his last cry, a cry to her—beating through 
her, beating round her, lifting her out of despair into a 
serene reliance on his everlasting love. 

At last she was moved physically—moved to match 
that lift of her soul—rose out of her chair and stood 
with staring eyes, absorbed, as if listening—as if about 
to cry out. Then, swept away by that surge within her 
and about her, which was more than she could bear, 
she burst into tears, fell on her knees by the table, and 
wept as though her heart were breaking. Her emotion 
was like the precious pain of travail—the birth of a 
new idea. In her agony she smothered her sobs till she 
could smother them—could bear them—no longer, and 
she cried out wildly, terribly, again and again. 

But the rhythm of her new idea went moving through 
her, crushing and rending, killing her with pain, yet 
soothing her constantly, encouraging her, reassuring her. 

BE HAPPY. I LOVE ANGEL. 

Angela stood at last in the middle of the kitchen. 

271 


# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 

Joe’s words (she knew now that they were Joe’s own 
words) still rang in her ears, the beat of great wings 
lifted her up, and her pain was ended. For several min¬ 
utes she consciously watched herself, as in a dream, soar 
and escape out of all sorrow and all difficulty, saw her¬ 
self rising into a warm sunlit sky, below which, like a 
receding sea, flowed the dark waters of her recent past. 
Joe had saved her. She believed in him, believed in the 
power of his love. The words “Be happy” rang in her 
ears with increasing insistence; they were beating through 
her in immense arcs, seemed to be signalling to some 
complementary word hidden in her memory—some 
phrase to be caught that would complete this experience, 
complete the circle of their swing, make everything clear 
to her. 

She tried to think, sought for that hidden word or 
phrase, endeavoured to assist in her own release. At last 
she caught it, she thought. Yes; it was more than a 
word, more than a phrase. Suddenly the significance of 
Joe’s last cry came to her, justified, unmistakably true. 
Her acceptance of it became more than belief—became 
certain knowledge—conviction. It was verified. 

“Are you happy?” he had asked her in the road that 
morning. 

“Happy? Why—yes,” she had answered. 

She had lied. He had known that she lied, had known 
that without him she could not be happy; and he had 
sent her this cry from the barrier of death to reassure her 
—had himself come back from the barrier of death to 
save her. 

She felt again the contact of their souls out there in 
the hot road. They had understood each other clearly 
272 


& AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
then, had known each other in that moment of spiritual 
insight; and what Angela had known of Joe was the 
depth of his sorrow for her and the splendid singleness 
of his devotion. 

Suddenly now, as she stood alone in the middle of the 
room, she stretched out her hand, as if to grasp a hand 
waiting beside her own, and said softly, “Joe! Oh, my 
own Joe!” Tears ran down her cheeks and wet her 
bosom, but they were no longer tears of pain. She un¬ 
derstood and believed this mystery of love that was be¬ 
yond humanity, beyond belief, but was true and hers 
for ever. 

BE HAPPY. I LOVE ANGEL. 

Those were his words. He was not dead. He had 
come back. He was there beside her. 


273 


XXX J» 


Joe was dead. 

Why had he ever lived? Who can tell? Now he 
was dead. 

After leaving Angela in the road that morning, he 
had driven back to the Santos place, put up the horses 
and unloaded his cart, and had then gone out on to the 
lower rises of the Fist to hoe a small patch of sweet corn 
in the garden that was his delight. He expended on 
this garden all the diverted energy of his love; he worked 
here whenever he could get the time, dreaming meanwhile 
of Angela in a thousand episodes of sentiment. 

In this growing green plot he was able to withdraw 
from the present and all the world about him. He was 
so fortunate as to be able commonly to descend into a 
mental chamber of preserved reality and there find the 
object of his complete devotion. There Angela waited, 
just as he had known her—lovely, gay and loving, and 
with that added mysterious quality which had differen¬ 
tiated her from all the other women in the world. In 
this inner chamber he heard the modulations of her 
voice, saw the shine of her eyes and felt their light upon 
his own, caught each melting shift and change of expres¬ 
sion, pose and gesture. Colours, lights and accessories 
were all there too, parts of the beautiful felicity. In the 
faint and enriching blur of an intermittent dream he went 
beside her again. 


274 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
These were silent times for Joe. Even the muscles en¬ 
gaged in the movement of his body contributed to the 
happy contemplation of that hidden chamber’s reality. 
Thoughtless, absorbed, he moved and lived with Angela 
there in a more clear and precious world than thought 
could ever lead him to; there he smiled and throbbed and 
murmured with the pleasure of re-sensed delights. He 
was still rapturously in love with her, though his rap¬ 
ture was tinged with pain, still rapturously happy by 
her side. 

Joe had, of course, other hours, harsh hours of active 
thought—hours of intensity, when he felt with keenness 
and despair the position of Angela in the world and his 
own position in relation to her. Then his mind ran 
in the circles of extraordinary ideas—the difficulties of 
divorce for her; the most practical way of eliminating 
Vinti; the chances of inducing Angela to run away with 
him; the possibilities of Giorgio’s death. They were 
torturing hours, bringing no consummation but exhausted 
emotion, self-contempt and despair; and at last he would 
escape from the futile contemplation of life into the 
secret chamber of his dream. 

This morning, as he hoed the young corn, all the 
lovely realities of his secret chamber were enhanced and 
enriched through his recent meeting with Angela in the 
flesh. His visions of her had been given new reality, 
new brilliance, new poignancy. The sight of her and the 
sound of her voice had filled him with new desire, and 
the brave lie she had told him about her happiness had 
intensified his devotion. 

As he worked, the storm came up with the wildness of 
a tornado, and the other workers on the Fist, observing 
275 


Jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
its swift approach, began to hurry down into the shelter 
of the settlement. They called to Joe as they went, urg¬ 
ing him to get under cover, but he laughed and waved 
them on and continued his hoeing with renewed energy. 
He hoped to finish before the rain fell, so that all his 
precious young corn might be well watered after the 
recent days of heat and drought. 

He finished with a satisfied laugh just as the storm 
broke, and with a glance up at the crest of the Fist 
showing dim through the rain, he tossed his hoe on to 
his shoulder and started for the barn. He had scarcely 
broken into a trot between his new-piled corn rows how¬ 
ever, when the heavens opened in a great chasm of 
lightning, revealing white incandescent depths within 
the sky, like the opening of a furnace door in an im¬ 
mense darkness. In that instant Joe paused, changed 
his direction vaguely, threw up his arms, whirled about 
with heavy, stumbling feet, and fell across the low green 
rows of corn, with his face turned up to the pelting sky. 

Thunder rolled and echoed among the countless hills 
of heaven; lightning tore through its smothering vapours 
with the madness of pain; the rain fell in torrents, ham¬ 
mering, hissing, spiteful. In the midst of this fury Joe's 
hoe had acted as a lightning-rod, and now he was dead— 
gone down in the flaming splendour of the angry heavens, 
with the wind and the sea and the thunders roaring 
about him, and the great Fist looking imperturbably down 
upon him through swaying veils of rain. 

Nature does not often act in a manner so tragically 
final, and now, by the very extravagance of her method, 
she had rendered Joe’s death somehow unbelievable. 
The annihilation for the accomplishment of which all 
276 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE & 

Nature had co-operated had somehow miscarried, for 
something of Joe had escaped the catastrophe. It was 
not so strange that Angela should be successively amazed, 
bewildered, incredulous, in the face of that tremendous 
assault upon one man. She had left him a few hours 
before; he had been distant then, but real. She had 
since had his message through the Indian Doctor. 
Though it was beyond her comprehension, nothing could 
have been more real than that. 

Angela had become weary of despairs and sorrows; 
she was ready to believe in some good thing, and, for 
her, Joe was not now dead as her mother was dead. She 
could not imagine him, as she could imagine her mother, 
as the conventionalized figure of a heavenly translation. 
On the contrary, she still sensed his presence, she could 
hear his words, she could feel within her the beat of 
wings that lifted her and comforted her as only Joe 
had ever comforted her. The past was dead, not Joe. 
The suffering creature who had been herself was dead, 
not Joe. No, he was not dead; he was by her side. 

In the realization of his presence she was serenely 
happy. His message to her, delivered through the In¬ 
dian Doctor and Mrs. Session, had said, “Be happy," and 
now she was happy. That was the ultimate evidence 
of her assurance. 

So, she stood at last in the middle of the kitchen, with 
tears flowing down her cheeks, and stretching out a hand 
to clasp a hand that waited for the pressure, she cried in 
a quiet voice, “Joe! Oh, my own Joe!" There was no 
despair in her cry; her tears were tears of peace; for he 
was there beside her. 


277 


* XXXI ** 


Giorgio Vinti stood on the beach below his shack, in 
his sou’wester and short oilskin coat, his feet planted wide 
apart, and gazed into the grey density of the fog. It had 
been a busy day for Giorgio. He had foreseen the storm 
and, in addition to the regular morning work of his crews, 
he had made a tour of inspection, examining and tight¬ 
ening everything to hold against the coming fury. When 
the storm had passed he had gone the rounds again, and 
had tightened up and straightened out the inevitable 
strain and tangle of gear caused by the wild winds and 
waters. 

In the meantime he had seen Joe go down. His men 
had been among the first to arrive at the scene of that 
catastrophe. Giorgio stood now, peering into the depths 
of the fog with unseeing eyes, and as an aftermath 
of the day’s disaster his thoughts ran vaguely on the 
mysteries of life and death. The episodes of a man’s 
mysterious coming, his mysterious stay, and his mysterious 
departure from life ebbed and flowed obscurely through 
Giorgio’s brain, as the tide at his feet flowed obscurely 
under the fog. 

The spectacle of Joe’s death had somehow roused 
Giorgio to wonder at existence. What had the lad’s life 
amounted to? Why had he ever been born? If a man 
must die at last anyway—if that was the end—what was 
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the use of striving, as he strove, to build individual suc¬ 
cess? If that was the end, how was he, with his good 
business, his money in the bank, his wife and his new 
house—how was he any better off than Joe? Suppose 
he had to die to-morrow! What would all his possessions, 
all his past, amount to then? There must be some reason 
in this business of life, he told himself, but he couldn’t 
find it. 

He gave it up at last, and taking the pipe from his 
mouth, he knocked out its ash with a tap against a 
beached dory, spat into the fog, turned his steps up the 
beach and his thoughts toward Rosie Rosario. 

When he arrived at the Rosario house, he found it 
dark and empty, and pausing a moment to consider, he 
turned away with a cynical chuckle, supposing that 
Rosie had gone to pray by Joe’s dead body. "She’ll be 
back before long,” he muttered; in the meantime he’d go 
over and give his wife some money. He hadn’t seen 
Angela for nearly a week. 

He was surprised and piqued to find that his wife 
had also gone to pay her respects to the dead young man. 
It was queer, he thought, that both of these women, so 
differently made—the one so strong and passionate, the 
other so gentle and still—should be in love with this lad 
who was dead. He knew how commanding a young fel¬ 
low like Joe could be to the emotions of women. That 
was a part of the great mystery of life that he could not 
fathom; it proved that the reasons for everything were 
too deep for him ever to find; deeper than any desire 
or ambition of man. 

Sitting in the little kitchen of the Grania house, Giorgio 
mentally compared himself with Joe. As he saw them— 
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two men—Giorgio felt that he had a commendable array 
of assets to show; Joe had nothing but himself. Yet they 
had been rivals in temperament, and these two funda¬ 
mentally different women (and other women, too, no 
doubt) had loved the boy as Giorgio felt that he had 
never been loved. For Giorgio women had always had 
only the easy familiarity that lacked all emotion, or 
the constraint of an ardour that calculated how much he 
might be worth. 

The difference was not because of his age, for he had 
once been young himself; and now as he looked back it 
seemed that women had always been the same with him 
—either unmovedly familiar or gaily calculating. Was 
it his reputation? No. His reputation had not always 
been what it was to-day. Character? No, not that 
either. Chance? 

He could not fathom it—it was a mystery—and at 
last he rose and went out of the house. The secret of 
this business of life was beyond him. He was suddenly 
aware that he had never known what life meant. 

He went along in the driving fog, unsatisfied with him¬ 
self, wearied of his argument, yet unable to turn his mind 
into any other channel. In loving this man who was 
dead, how were these two women succeeding—what were 
they getting out of it? And in having their love, where 
was the dead man’s benefit?—he was dead. And if, in 
loving him like that, the women weren’t somehow suc¬ 
ceeding, why did they do it? 

He became involved. It was useless to think. 

He heard footsteps near and he stopped abruptly, to 
decipher them, as it were. In a moment a dark figure 
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loomed out of the fog near him, like a shadow, and he 
knew it was Rosie. 

“That you, Rosie?” he asked quietly, by way of 
greeting. 

“Yes.” 

Giorgio turned and moved along at her side. 

“Been over t’ Santos’?” he asked. 

“Yes.” 

Giorgio laughed quietly, and for the space of several 
steps neither of them spoke. Then he perceived that 
she was not taking the direct way to her house. 

“Where you goin’?” he inquired. 

“I’m goin’ fr a walk. I want t’ talk t’ you.” 

“Why don’t we talk in the house?” 

“In your house?” she countered. 

“We can go into the new house, if you want.” 

“No. I meant the house where your wife lives.” 

Giorgio sensed trouble. She wanted to quarrel, and so 
had become unreasonable. “What ails you, girl?” he 
asked. 

“Nothin’. It don’t matter. We can talk on the 
beach.” 

They descended to the water’s edge. Giorgio wondered 
what it was all about, but it didn’t interest him deeply. 
He was too tired to quarrel. 

“I’m goin’ away,” Rosie said. 

“So?” 

“Yes. I’m goin’ away an’ I ain’t cornin’ back.” 

“Why not?” he asked casually. “Anythin’ serious the 
matter?” 

“Everythin’s the matter. Nothin’s ever been right. 

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I don’t b’long here—the Rosarios never did b’long here. 
They’re all gone now but me, an’ I’m goin’.” 

“Goin’t’ desert the ship, eh?” he remarked. 

She nodded. “Yes. They all went off an’ left me 
t’ drown; now I’m goin’ off an’ let the ol’ ship sink. I 
don’t owe ’em anythin’, do I ?” 

“No,” he agreed. “But you ain’t had so bad a time. 
Where you goin’?” 

“N’York.” 

“Oh! You’ll look ’em up, then!” 

“Yes. I’ll look ’em up an’ call ’em down, an’ then I’ll 
go my own way.” 

“Whatever way that is!” he suggested. 

“I’ll find somethin’ t’ do,” she said. 

“Goin’ t’ work?” 

“Sure. What d’you think?” 

“What you goin’ t’ work at?” 

“I do’ know,” she said testily. “If I’m strong enough 
t’ work here, I’m strong enough t’ work there.” 

Giorgio nodded and was silent. He saw that she was 
destined to become a plaything of men. He knew that 
kind of women and he recognized in Rosie the temper¬ 
amental characteristics of the tribe. He was not sorry 
for her; he was rather glad at the prospect of her depar¬ 
ture. “So you’ve made up your mind! When did you 
decide t’ go, Rosie?” 

“I’ve wanted t’ go for a long time, but I been a fool. 

I never had the courage. Now I can’t stand this place 
any longer. I’ve got t’ go!” 

“ ’Cause that fellah was killed to-day?” 

“Oh, yes, partly. That makes it easier t’ go. But 
that’s on’y one thing. There’s a hundred others.” 

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“What cTyou mean—a hundred others ?” 

“Well, I been deserted, an’ I’m all alone, I’ve got 
nothin’. Nobody gives a damn what happens t’ me. I 
can’t stand livin’ here like this, that’s all.” 

Giorgio drew closer to her. “Ain’t I treated you all 
right?” he asked. 

She stood still. “Yes,” she said. “But I’m through 
with you too. I can’t stand you any longer, Giorgio.” 

“No?” he said quietly. 

“No. I ain’t as much of a fool ’s you think. What 
d’you suppose I ever let you come t’ see me for?” 

He laughed. “I never know why women let me come 
t’ see ’em.” 

“I told you that once before. Most of ’em do ’cause 
they want your money—not you.” 

“Yes. I remember. That was the night you wanted 
me t’ marry you.” 

“Yes. You wouldn’t marry me, but you proposed that 
I go an’ live with you jus’ the same. I didn’t like that. 

I wouldn’t. Since then you’ve come an’ lived with me, 
kind of.” 

“Yes,” he said. “Kind of. Without marryin’ you. 
Time changes folks’ minds.” 

She peered at him through the fog. “D’you suppose 
I’d come t’ like you any more, Giorgio?” 

“I don’t know,” he said carelessly. “I suppose you 
needed the money.” 

“No,” she answered. “It was diff’rent with me.” 

Giorgio laughed out at that. “They’d all say the same 
thing, I guess,” he remarked. 

With a flaming of her old anger, Rosie faced him in the 
fog. “I ain’t lyin’,” she said. “I’m done with this place 
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AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 
an’ everythin' in it; I don’t have t’ lie any more—not 
here. I let you come ’cause I hated you an’ that fool 
wife you bought. I didn’t marry you—she beat me 
there; but I took you from her an’ kep’ you away. 
That’s done. I hope it hurt her so’s you’ll never be 
able t’ fix things up with her again. You can go back to 
her now an’ try. But don’t think I wanted you, Giorgio. 
God, no!” 

“You took me, though,” he said, “an’ you took the 
money, too.” 

“Yes, I took it. But it's the way I tell you. There 
was just one thing on this island I wanted. Now the 
poor fellah’s dead. An’ there was your wife t’night, 
hangin’ aroun’ his coffin an’ cryin’. She can’t have him! 
But she can have you; I don’t want you, Giorgio. 
There’s nothin’ here I want, now. I’ll go crazy if I 
stay. I got t’get out!” 

Suddenly Giorgio hated her. He saw that she had 
used him in the satisfaction of her jealousy; and all the 
time he had supposed—had made himself suppose—that 
he was using her. Now something deep in him flamed 
slowly upward, and he came, in fact, to the defence of his 
wife. 

“Yes,” he said to Rosie, his voice gone suddenly hard, 
“you’ve got t’ get out—you bet you have! ’Cause I am 
goin’ home. You couldn’t stand it here without me be¬ 
side you. There’s somethin’ queer about your breed, 
Rosie. You Rosarios got too much nerves—too much 
edge—you’re wild—you’re crazy! There’s your brother 
—too good t’ work—ran away from home t’ play aroun’ 
N’York with girls that can buy him clo’s. There’s your 
father! Jus’ think of a man leavin’ his home an’ his 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
job an’ his daughter—chasin’ off t’ look f’r a son that 
don’t want t’ be found. Crazy! An’ there’s you, 
thinkin’ you can fool a man like me! I’ve had some ex¬ 
perience, Rosie. I ain’t always lived on the island. I 
can tell what a woman means—when she means anythin’. 
I know you, girl. I’ve known you all your life, pretty 
near. I wasn’t dazzled by your beauty! No, I was 
thinkin' o’ myself, not you, an' I got what I went after. 
P’raps you did too. All right! But you took me an’ you 
took my money, an’ that makes you what you are. Now 
you got t’ go, ’cause all the Fist knows, Rosie. We ain’t 
kep’ things very dark. No.” 

Rosie gazed at him through the fog, and he could hear 
the sneer in her voice as she answered, “You’ll have a 
hard time explainin’ t’ Angela why you been cornin’ t’ 
see me.” 

"Mrs. Vinti needn’t bother you an’ I,” he said. 
“You got t’ get out. You won’t have me standin’ by 
you any more, an’ everyone that knows you is goin’ to 
give you hell!” 

Rosie laughed. She was going away; his threats didn’t 
make any difference. In the world she was going to, no¬ 
body would know her past—nobody would care about her 
past; she was going to escape from her past. Yet 
Giorgio’s words touched her with a queer chill. She had 
a sudden realization that in executing this coup for the 
wounding of Angela, she had taken a long leap out of the 
past, and she saw that in leaving the island, she would be 
taking a long leap into the unknown future. Giorgio’s 
words filled her with a kind of foreboding. It was as if 
her time had come. 

She maintained her assurance, however. She wasn’t 

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# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
going down, she told herself; she wasn't going down—she 
was going on, simply going on. 

“Don’t forget that I ain’t alone in this,” she said. 
“You’ve done somethin’ t’ your wife as well as t’ me. 
She ain’t goin’ to meet you like a hero when you go back.” 

“I don’t have t’ worry, Rosie, an’ she don’t. ’S no use 
talkin’ about it. You’re done—that’s the thing! That 
shows you what you’ve won. You hated my wife an’ 
you tried t’ do her some kind o’ harm. Well, that’s 
where I came in. I see you’d come t’ the point o’ meetin’ 
me like I offered you long ago, an’ I could get rid o’ 
you at the same time, so’s you’d never bother her or me 
again. There’s just one sure way for a man t’ beat a 
woman, an’ that’s the way I beat you. Angela an’ me 
can stand what’s cornin’ to us. You can’t stand the pun¬ 
ishment that’s cornin’ t’ you. You can’t live any longer 
with decent people.” 

“Decent people!” she cried. “Damn your decent 
people!” 

In those words she sneered at all the canons of re¬ 
spectability, abandoned all the ideals she had struggled 
for, turned her back upon the past for ever. 

“Don’t preach, Vinti,” she went on. “I ain’t goin’ t’ 
miss you an’ the other decent people o’ the Fist. I’m 
goin’ t’ be free o’ the Fist, an’ I’ve made your precious 
wife suffer some. That’s what I was after, an’ I’m willin’ 
t’ pay by gettin’ out. You’re on’y a man an’ you don’t 
know what she’s been through while you been cornin’ t’ 
me.” 

“A month!” he exclaimed. “She’s had a hard time fr 
a month, p’raps. But her hard time’s over now, an’ 
286 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 
yours is jus beginnin\ You don’t know what you’ve got 
t Pay, girl. You’re goin’t’ find a hard bunch o’ fellahs 
in N York, an the women—the women you'll travel with 
are devils.” 

“You ought t’ know!” she sneered. 

“You bet I know! An’ I’m tellin’ you. I know your 
tribe o’ women, an’ I know what they do to each other; 
an’ I’m tellin’ you they’re devils.” 

“I guess I c’n take care o' myself,” she said smoothly. 
She meant it. She felt strong, courageous. 

Giorgio laughed shortly. “I guess p’raps you can,” he 
agreed. “But they’ll hurt you jus’ the same; an’ then 
you can think o’ me.” 

“Good God!” she cried. “Why would I think o’ you? 
You’re one o’ the first things I want t’ forget.” 

“You’ll remember me jus’ the same.” 

“Oh, let’s go!” she exclaimed. “We ain’t doin’ any 
good here.” 

Giorgio had talked himself into a good humour. He 
felt that, after all, he had beaten this woman. In any 
event, he was through with her. 

“Yes,” he agreed, let’s go. We understand each other, 
an’ I got t’ get home.” 

They both stirred as they spoke. 

Rosie laughed easily. “Good-bye,” she said. “Give 
my love t’ dear Angela.” 

“Oh, let’s shake hands,” he proposed mildly. 

She understood the challenge in his words and she put 
her hand firmly into his, to show him that she was not 
afraid—not afraid of anything, past of future. Giorgio 
perceived what she meant to convey. Her courage moved 
287 


jt AN ISLAND CHRONICLE * 
him. In spite of his recent anger, he had no hatred for 
her now. Actually, he felt a faint pity for her. As he 
held her hand he asked, “You got plenty o’ money, 
Rosie?" 

“Money? Sure!” she answered carelessly. “Sure I 
have, or I wouldn't be sendin' you home yet.” 

He shook his head vigorously, smiling toward her. 
“You're strong, all right,” he said, “but you're like all the 
women o’ your kind, an’ your whole tribe’s crazy.” 

She drew her hand away. They turned up the beach, 
each going in a separate direction, and after a moment 
even the sound of their footsteps was lost in the drifting 
fog. 

Very early the next morning, before the day had 
broken, the wagon of Foteles, the undertaker, was driven 
through the sleeping settlement of the Fist, bearing the 
long pine box that contained Joe’s body from the Santos 
house to the ferry at Melton. Joe was going back to 
Vermont. 

Angela had been waiting for hours at the dark window 
of the room at the front of the house, listening for this 
last passing of the man she loved, and now, as the wagon 
came on, she peered into the fog in an attempt to catch 
some glimpse of the hearse that bore him. Her eyes 
could not pierce the thick gloom out of doors, but so 
keenly was her sense of hearing focused on the approach¬ 
ing wagon, she could see in imagination the driver in his 
seat, the revolving of the wheels, the movement of the 
horse, and that long pale box in the body of the vehicle. 
She bowed her head to pray as the wagon came on, when 
into the open channels of her aural sense there flowed 
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^ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE £ 
the roar of a sudden silence. The wagon had stopped. 

Angela knew at once that it had stopped in front of 
the Rosario house; forgetting her prayer and raising her 
head, she peered into the gloom in an agony of acute in¬ 
terest, attempting to see. What was going on there? 
She found herself trembling; her body was shaken by 
an emotional agitation which she could not control. She 
was almost mad with an unnamed fear, almost frenzied 
with ridiculous jealousy. Then she became aware of 
Joe’s presence in the silence behind her. She could feel 
his presence; she knew that he was there. Tears came 
to her eyes in sudden self-reproach; gradually she be¬ 
came quiet again; her agitation ceased; she gazed out 
into the gloom. 

She could discern a wide orange glare in the fog, as 
if the door of the Rosario house stood open, emitting the 
indirect light of a lamp. Shadows cast by this light 
moved upon the semi-transparent surfaces of the fog as 
upon a screen of veils, with large, erratic motions; but 
there was no sound, and though Angela raised the sash 
a short distance, those shadows moved silently. 

Soon, and suddenly, the orange glare disappeared, the 
opaque gloom of the morning again engulfed the world. 
There was the sharp, single sound of a house door being 
closed, and in a moment the wagon resumed its audible 
journey along the road. 

Angela did not understand that episode at the Rosario 
house, but as the vehicle came on again, she abandoned 
her speculations regarding it and bowed her head in 
prayer: 

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. . . 

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£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE jt 

She could see again in imagination, through the acute 
perception of her sense of hearing, the vehicle progressing 
on its way, the long pine box in the body of the wagon, 
that splendid frame of a man, broken, empty now, mov¬ 
ing serenely along on its last unconscious journey. In 
her heart there was a sympathetic pain for all the pains 
that body had suffered, but by her side the spirit that 
had been its tenant whispered, ‘'I love Angel.” Nothing 
could have been more true than the passing of Joe’s 
body, yet she could not see it; and though she could not 
see him beside her, she knew that he was there. She did 
not need to see him; she did not even yearn to see 
him as she yearned to see that body passing in the gloom 
of the morning. 

"Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen." 

As she prayed, there was a crash of glass above her 
head, and out of the impenetrable shadows a woman’s 
voice—Rosie’s voice—came calling, "Good-bye, Mrs. 
Vinti. I’m taking him away with me!” 

Angela did not lift her head. With the glass shatter¬ 
ing down about her, she prayed as the wagon passed on: 

"May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, 
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen." 

The sound of the horse’s hoofs, the sound of the re¬ 
volving wheels, the sound of that voice, died. Joe’s 
body, proceeding on its way, descended into the marshes. 

He was gone. Rosie was gone. Angela continued to 
kneel at the window, continued to gaze into the fog that 
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# AN ISLAND CHRONICLE j* 
wove and swayed now in thf first breeze of the morning 
as shapes and shadows gath r and float in the depths of 
a dim crystal. She saw that passionate woman who had 
been her friend, attending with devotion an unresponsive, 
passionless body on its last journey, while the man him¬ 
self, whom the woman had loved, stood silent here at 
her side. She was filled with pity for Rosie, for she 
knew that soon even that broken body would be taken 
from her care, and she would be left alone to wander 
up and down a bitter world of disillusionment and pain. 


291 


XXXII * 


A few days later Giorgio Vinti went home to his wife. 
It was Saturday evening. Over the island the splendour 
of summer hung fullblown, and across the sea the sum¬ 
mer moon was shining. 

During the days since he had parted from Rosie in 
the fog, Vinti had been thinking of many things. The 
world of his affairs had settled into a kind of quiet. His 
anxiety about the Fish Trust had subsided; it had made 
no aggressive move against him, but it stood before his 
consciousness like a hovering shadow. During the past 
week the fish had begun to run plentifully. He had at 
last appointed a foreman in Rosario's place. The episode 
with Rosie was finished; he felt in his heart that it was 
to be the last unlawful adventure of his life, and like a 
sailor who has voyaged far upon the seas, he was eager 
for home at last. Something like gladness stirred within 
him at the prospect of home, yet he was dimly melan¬ 
choly at finding himself glad that his adventures were 
over, for it meant that his youth was done. He had no 
premonition of finality, in fact he looked forward to the 
future for his ultimate justification; but he had an un¬ 
mistakable sense of change. 

Yes, his youth was done. His ambitions and his pas¬ 
sions of the past year had been the last leapings of the 
flame of his youth—the unconscious clutchings of his ego 
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at a vanishing brilliance. Among those ambitions had 
been his marriage and his dream of strong sons; among 
those passions had been his recent affair with Rosie. 

Though he had, in that affair, proceeded with gusto, 
he had, nevertheless, advanced with a new calculation 
that measured every step of the way, and he was aware 
of unnumbered phases in which it differed from similar 
adventures in the past. Among other things, he knew 
that he had been less ardent than formerly; but mainly, 
as a difference, he perceived that the adventure was un¬ 
lawful. He was aware of subtle consequences, never be¬ 
fore encountered, which now seemed inescapable. In 
this episode with Rosie he had, for the first time, come 
face to face with morality. That was, in Giorgio, the 
definite sign that the inconsequence of his youth was 
ended. Mentally and emotionally he had arrived at a 
new stage of development. 

Of course his wife was a prime factor in this changed, 
this enlarged view; but the fact that he had a wife was 
proof of the change in himself. The Giorgio who had a 
wife was not the same Giorgio who for so many years 
had gone proudly without one. Yes, his youth was done, 
and he turned his face at last to the realities of man¬ 
hood. In the few days that had elapsed between his 
separation from Rosie and his return to his wife, he had 
thought of many things. Through the death of Joe he 
had come to see that a man is not necessarily done when 
he is dead; he saw that the influence of Mrs. Grania's 
life continued after she was practically forgotten; he saw 
that his own survival depended on what he might leave 
behind him when he followed them out of existence. 

The urge to perpetuate himself, though not so stated, 
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£ AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
was crying in Giorgio’s soul. In the five weeks of his 
married life, he had come to feel the mystical pressure of 
the paternal instinct; and though in that time he had 
thwarted his impulse and diverted his forces, he now 
found himself, with all immediate means of diversion 
removed, vibrating under that cry in his soul as a 
stringed instrument will vibrate in the wind and give 
out music. This cry of paternity had become more deep 
and more persistent than anything Giorgio had ever 
known. It was spiritual and reverent, ambitious and 
hopeful. Though the sons for whom he yearned were 
undoubtedly to be his definite answer to the threat of 
the Fish Trust, he was urged to their birth by an im¬ 
pulsion stronger than any that mere expediency could 
command. He was vibrating in the wind of a new am¬ 
bition which had been slowly evolved in his conscious¬ 
ness; and when, on this Saturday night, he went home 
to his wife, his very entrance into her presence was like 
a strengthening of the breeze, and he vibrated more and 
more rhythmically, until at last he voiced the desire that 
was in him. 

It was after the supper-time when he arrived, and the 
dusk was beginning to deepen. Fireflies trailed pale lines 
of light in the cool deeper darkness. Angela, her work 
done, had gone out of doors to sit on the grass above 
her father’s vineyard. She was serene and still, like the 
summer evening, quiet in spirit, wrapped in the warmth 
of a gentle peace. 

She rose, in her light dress, at Giorgio’s approach, 
and stood luminous in the moonlight, ready to serve this 
man who, she felt, could never mean anything to her 
again. His coming disturbed her serenity, but it was an 
294 


S AN ISLAND CHRONICLE S 
intrusion of no great importance. She was strangely 
unembarrassed in his presence, and as he came on quietly, 
swinging his stick in a regular rhythm, with his hat in 
his hand, she wondered casually what he would say. 

"You goin’ in, Angela?” he asked quietly. 

"Not unless you want somethin’,” she answered. 

"Let’s sit down, then,” he proposed. "I want t’ talk 
to you about things.” 

They sat down beside each other, not very far apart, 
and Giorgio, with his left hand extended to support his 
body, leaned toward her. 

"We’re married,” he said, after a minute. 

It was a tense moment for Giorgio. Angela might do 
anything with the phrase he had just uttered. He gave 
it out—put it into her hands, as it were—for her to do 
with it as she would. If she tore it indignantly to tatters 
and flung it back at him, admitting the phrase but de¬ 
nying the fact, he must accept it from her so. He could 
not coerce her into accepting his new ambition which he 
had brought to her, for his new ambition was a strange 
thing which would be destroyed if accomplished by means 
of any force whatever. She must either understand him 
and meet him, or by either refusing or failing to do so, 
deny him the achievement of this greatest conception of 
his life. 

Angela turned and looked into his face as if trying to 
read what lay behind his words; then she turned her 
head away and waited in silence. 

Her silence was a greater forbearance than Giorgio had 
expected of her—there were so many things she might 
have said—and he went on, momentarily reassured, to¬ 
ward the statement of his case. 

295 


AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ^ 

“I didn’t understand what it meant till now,” he said; 
and again he paused to let her have her way with his 
words. He had a dim feeling that at some stage of this 
conversation she would inject the words “It’s too late!” 
The premonition of that phrase was a hovering menace, 
but he would not deny her the opportunity to utter it. 
His conscience told him that in coming to her now, he 
was too late; but he would not connive with himself to 
evade her saying so. 

“1 ain’t acted right,” he said. “I ain’t treated you 
right.” 

This time as he paused he unconsciously held his 
breath, so intent was he on what she would say—what 
she must say—to that. But still she sat and said noth¬ 
ing. He began to feel a threat in her silence; he was 
impelled to make her speak. 

“You know what I’ve been doin’, Angela?” 

“Yes,” she answered quietly, without moving. 

If she had condemned him then, it would have been 
a relief. In effect, she had not broken silence at all. He 
wondered vaguely if she knew, in her woman’s way (re¬ 
membering her perceptiveness), how fearful he was. He 
had a sense that she was waiting to pounce upon his 
precious ambition at her own right time. He felt that 
her bitterness might be satisfied only by rendering his high 
hope impossible. 

Something surged in Giorgio’s breast. He wanted her 
to understand. He wanted the soul of her to come out 
and commune with his soul. He wanted her to help him. 
He had come to her with a clean idea; he wanted her to 
accept it, and to accept him with it. He wanted her in- 
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** AN ISLAND CHRONICLE # 
tensely. For an instant his mind lost control of his 
faculties, and out of the depths of him, but quietly, a 
cry escaped. 

“Don’t you care, Angela?” 

He was amazed at his own words. It had not been a 
wise thing to ask. He saw her stiffen at those words, 
saw her lift her head as if at a challenge. 

“Care!” she repeated. “Sure I care! Don’t you sup¬ 
pose I’ve got any feelin’s?” 

Yes, he did; it was her feelings that he feared. 

“I don’t blame you,” he said. Then, after a pause, 
he asked, “But what’re we goin’t’ do?” 

For a long time she made no response, while he waited; 
then he interrupted her thoughts. 

“I’ve come back. Will you take me back?” 

She looked at him again, shifting her position. 

“I married you t’ be your wife,” she said. 

“Yes,” he agreed. 

Then, for the first time in relation to Giorgio’s defec¬ 
tion, she flamed with anger. 

“Listen, Giorgio!” she cried, and her tone was a tone 
of warning—a threat. “You can’t treat me like you treat 
them other women. You can’t come an’ go as you like 
between me an’ them. I'm your wife!” 

He shifted his position under the fire of her indignant 
protest, and suddenly he felt that the dangers he had 
feared were passed. She did care. He was suddenly, 
humbly penitent—penitent for her sake. He wanted to 
take his wife in his arms, to pledge himself to her pro¬ 
tection and service; but his sense counselled caution, and 
he sat apart. 


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'‘Listen/’ he said. “I’ve come back t’ tell you that 
I’m through with women. I know now what I didn’t 
know before, an’ I’ve come home t’ stay.” 

Angela had no idea what it was that he had come to 
know, but she took in his words with a kind of relaxation. 
She had been unconsciously holding herself tense, deter¬ 
mined to bring him to an acknowledgment of her po¬ 
sition. Now he had acknowledged her position, had sub¬ 
mitted by implication to the authority of its rights. She 
could ask for nothing more now. Later she could de¬ 
mand performance according to his words, but of that 
performance she did not feel sure. No promise he might 
give, she felt, could guarantee his constancy. But she 
was going to take him back—what else could she do? 
Physically he meant nothing to her; but she felt a clear 
responsibility for his immortal soul. Yes, she was going 
to take him back, and for the present she must give his 
good intentions full credit; but she would warn him. 

“If you’ve come t’ stay,” she said, “remember you got 
t’ stay. You can’t ever come back like this again re¬ 
member. You can’t ever do like this again.” 

The warning, when uttered, sounded futile, ridiculous; 
and she added, “P’raps I ought t’ tell you, Giorgio—I 
don’t need you. I been through too much; an’ I been 
through it all alone. Nothin’s worth enough t’ make me 
suffer any more. I won’t stand any more—not for any¬ 
one. I’m goin’t’ be happy. I ain’t goin’t’ let you nor 
anyone interfere with me.” 

Giorgio gathered from her warning that she did not 
trust him. He would have liked to come home to a wife 
who would have greeted him and his ambition a little 
more gently. But to himself he admitted the justice of 
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his wife's attitude. She couldn’t have been more gentle, 
he acknowledged. 

“I’m sorry for all I’ve done, Angela. I’ve come back 
t’ stay, I tell you, t’ make you happy an’ be happy with 
you.” 

He leaned over and took her hand as he spoke, and she 
made no resistance. 

“Well . . she accepted quietly. She didn’t believe 
him, but she was going to take him back. 

They were both silent for several minutes. The moon 
flooded earth and sea with radiance. From the shore 
there floated up, like gentle sighs, the sound of waves 
breaking sleepily. 

“Angela,” Giorgio said at last, very softly, “Angela, 
you’re young. I’m gettin’ old. I don’t want t’ die an’ 
be forgotten. I want t’ go on livin’, even after I’m dead.” 

She didn’t understand what he meant and waited for 
him to go on. She wondered faintly if he could know 
that in spite of his death Joe was alive, actually there be¬ 
side her, sustaining her, filling her with a contented de¬ 
termination to be happy, making this other man who had 
come home unnecessary to her. 

“If I died now,” Giorgio proceeded, “it’d be jus’ the 
same ’s if I’d never lived. Nobody’d care, an’ I’d be 
soon forgotten.” 

He paused again, half hoping that she might assure 
him of her remembrance, but she didn’t. 

“I want t’ be the father o’ sons, Angela; sons that’ll 
remember me when I’m dead.” 

He uttered the words quietly, but there was in his tone 
something of the intensity of a cry. Angela was sud¬ 
denly sure of him—she suddenly understood him—knew 
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* AN ISLAND CHRONICLE ** 
that he had come home to stay. Awaking to the mean¬ 
ing of his words, she perceived the height of his desire. 
She found herself responding to his mood with a tremu¬ 
lous interest. Sons! Her imagination seemed to leap at 
the word. She felt at her breast a strange constriction, 
like the clutching pressure of small hands. Some un¬ 
familiar emotion was flooding through her, flooding over 
her. 

In a kind of panic she turned to Joe, felt him there 
beside her, calm and reassuring, heard again his words— 
“Be happy/' He was urging her on to happiness; and 
there, on the other hand, sat her husband, offering her a 
clear vision for her life. Slowly there settled within her, 
light and soft and satisfied, an indescribable sense of 
assurance involving some great accomplishment. The fu¬ 
ture was calling to her, and something was surging within 
her in answer to the call. 

“I want t’ be the father o' sons/' Giorgio repeated. 
“An’ I want you t’ be their mother.” 

Her mood developed in response to his words. She felt 
herself coupled to her husband by extraordinary bonds— 
extraordinary because her feeling was inconsistent with 
the facts of their married life. Her old faith in marriage 
revived, and she sensed, behind the surfaces of Giorgio's 
bluster, banter, money and passions, the simplicity of 
his nature, the loneliness of his soul. 

“I’ve seen 'em, Angela,” he began again. “I've seen our 
sons. They'll be dark an' strong an’ proud. Amer¬ 
icans they'll be. D’you want t’ be an American, 
Angela?” 

He asked her wistfully, and waited for her reply. 

“Yes,” she said, “if you want t’ be. I b’long here.” 

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an island chronicle & 

Giorgio was gratified at that. Her reply meant that 
she accepted his ambition. 

'‘Yes, they’ll be Americans, girl.” A tinge of en¬ 
thusiasm had crept into his voice. “They’ll go t’ col¬ 
lege an’ be proud. I’ve seen ’em walkin’ on the beach, 
tall an’ strong, Angela—masters. They won’t forget me 
when I’m dead, an’ they’ll love you—they’ll call you 
‘mother’—they’ll love you after you’re dead too.” 

Giorgio had recalled his sons out of the oblivion into 
which he had driven them when he had gone to see 
Rosie, and he held them in his consciousness, tenderly 
idealized, made precious by their absence and by the 
thought that he had been unjust to them. 

Tears gathered in Angela’s eyes as her husband talked 
—not at the thought of his death or her own, but at the 
recognition of Giorgio’s hope and trust in the future. 
She recognized and accepted them as her own. He had 
set up for her his own shining vision, and she understood 
dimly that he had thus brought and placed before her the 
desire of her heart, never before named. She reached 
out now and took up that vision, as her hand might have 
reached out and picked up a beautiful gem, and she put 
it away, as she might have put away a gem, in her bosom 
—felt it lying there against her heart. 

She felt it there in her bosom, very precious, very care¬ 
fully to be guarded, and it reflected the light from count¬ 
less new sources, illuminating her mind. Her imagina¬ 
tion became fruitful and she, too, saw her sons. She saw 
them as Giorgio had suggested, dark and strong and 
proud; and superimposing her own ideal upon his vision 
of them, she saw them handsome also, and kind. 

She was silent for a time, wrapped in the contemplation 

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of the future—her sons went with long strides down the 
beach, side by side; and then, slowly emerging from her 
vision, she was aware that they were both—Joe. 

That was the moment of her conscious dedication to 
the future. The realities of her life were for ever to be 
borne up and supported on the strength of her illusions 
—the illusion of the past and the illusion of the future. 
Her life was to be a bridge spanning a valley space be¬ 
tween two high points in unreality—the two splendid 
peaks of her ideal remembered and her ideal hoped for 
—the shining peaks of her love. Behind her stood the 
vision of Joe, the symbol of the past, of dead realities, 
of mysterious happiness attained; before her stood the 
vision of her sons, the justification of her life, the re¬ 
ward of all her pain—Joe resurrected and moving in 
the flesh. Across the valley space between those peaks 
stretched the bridge of her days, and she was to move out 
upon it with steady feet, her eyes upon the heights. 

She rose at last and Giorgio rose beside her, and 
through the moonlight flooding the world they went to¬ 
gether into the house. 

Later, as Angela knelt in her nightgown in the square 
room off the kitchen, she approached again, as she prayed, 
the God of whom she had been fearful, the God whom 
she had decried. Then, rising from her knees, she gazed 
at the pictured Madonna hanging above the bed; and in 
those deep lovely eyes she beheld the strength of women 
that endures all pain, the eternal hope and faith of 
mothers in their sons. 


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